54 BOMB 147 Lee Quiñones by Luc Sante

Installation view of If These Walls Could Talk, 2019, spray paint, acrylic, paint marker, ink, and pencil on gypsum. 55 Courtesy of Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles. Detail of Voices Carrying, 2015, spray paint, charcoal, oil, and pastel pencil on break-formed aluminum, 40 × 16 56 feet. Courtesy of the artist. I’ve known about Lee Quiñones for forty years. I saw the table and draw up something.” But even though I his distinctive LEE cars in the subway system in the brought up the idea, I couldn’t see a vision. So I started ‘70s—you couldn’t miss them—saw him in Charlie looking through old photographs and talking shop with Ahearn’s (1983), where he starred as my good friend, the artist Justen Ladda, who’s been Raymond Zoro, and in Blondie’s video for “Rapture” living in the neighborhood since 1978. (1980). And over the years, in galleries and on exte- I remembered my old Polaroids from 1979, then rior walls, I’d seen his later work, always explosive started looking at the Polaroids Maripol had taken and and meticulous, socially conscious and often auto- at the way Andy Warhol formulated his work. There’s biographical, transferring the kaleidoscopic energy of the lightbulb moment: when you get together with the his subway pieces to other media. I didn’t meet him, boys or your family, you break out the picture album. though, until both of us had appeared in Sara Driver’s The concept of Polaroids scattered on top of each other documentary Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years on a table came to me. The mural’s DNA then started of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2017). In the autumn of 2018, coming together (snaps) with one thing after the other. Sara and a bunch of us traveled to Randolph College I started thinking about all the things I heard, saw, and in Virginia to participate in an exhibit, lectures, and felt. I didn’t get to see the Ramones play, but I could readings connected to the movie. The college rented feel their presence at CBGB, where I went a few times. us a house for the three days and we hung out, heav- And I met Miguel Piñero many years before, but I didn’t ily. I found out that Lee is relaxed and generous, a really get to hang with him—he was much older. I put charismatic storyteller and a great cook. I learned that him into the mural with thoughts of how Martin Wong, he’d ridden his bicycle from New York City to Florida who was a dear friend of mine, had once loved him. I to raise money for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina went through all these avenues of people that I knew. (the city shut down a lane of the Holland Tunnel to let Of course, I knew Jean [Michel Basquiat] and hung out him bike through). I discovered that he is fierce and with him sparingly, had a fight with him once—an argu- passionate about his family, his friends, painting, vehi- ment. I felt that love and I wanted to give that back. And cles of all descriptions, the city, food, and much else the glamorous , she put us all on the map. I besides. We got a chance to continue the conversation saw the legendary Garden of Eden growing before my on an unusually warm Sunday afternoon in March, at eyes as I worked down the street from the garden, at a table outside Il Posto Accanto, on 2nd Street on the the pet store on Eldridge and Houston. Lower East Side, one of his favorite hangs. LS Oh, the one with bicycles and birds— LUC SANTE Tell me about that ceiling mural in the Indigo Hotel on Ludlow Street. LQ Exactly. I was working there when Barbara Gladstone and Allan Schwartzman walked in and said, “We want LEE QUIÑONES That mural was sort of speculative, leading to buy a painting from you. We want to give you a to a wonderful discovery. They hired me to create an show.” All those things came back to me in that mural. image for the hotel’s Sky Lobby. The building wasn’t I was gung-ho to make it. You know when you get even up yet. I asked them, “What do you want me the idea for the book and you just can’t wait to write? to do? Just splash colors?” And they were like, “We It took a year to develop because there were a lot of want you to do whatever you want. But we’d love to logistical fires to put out, timetables, and deadlines. I find out more about who you are.” So I told my story learned the grind, but it drove me crazy. to a table of architects, engineers, and a peppering of bean counters listening in, and they were all floored. LS Did you paint it in sections and then assemble it? At the conclusion of my presentation, they were like, “We want to turn this into the Lee Hotel.” Then it was LQ Yeah, all those Polaroids, they’re break-formed alu- my turn to be floored. minum panels fabricated by Juan Marcos over at Pinocchio Woodworks. I created each one individually LS Where’s my ten percent? on the ceiling with the idea of having a background like a bird’s-eye view of the Lower East Side. I just LQ Right? I thought: You know what? This is my neigh- couldn’t wait to get to each and every portrait. Even borhood, I grew up here, and I have fond memories if it was of a street corner, or of the Nuyorican Poets’ alongside crazy memories, but there’s so much more Café. And Maripol’s fabulous portrait of Patti. than just my own account of what happened here in the ’70s and ’80s. I went back and said, “This is my LS You made her look like Liberty in the Delacroix painting. rough sketch of what I would like to do, but I under- stand it’s a hotel, so we’ll meet in the middle.” We’re LQ Exactly. Patti was fabulous flair. I looked at a lot of talking about culture and experimental music, the photographs and reached out to every one of the pho- underground film scene, and everything in between. tographers. I was like, “Maripol, I really want to use And they were like, “Wow, this is fantastic. Go back to that photograph, and I want to stamp your name on it.

57 ART — LEE QUIÑONES I want your approval. In return, I want to give you the LQ No, that was before things started jumping off in New original study drawing.” I said that to every one of the York. A gentleman by the name of Claudio Bruni, who photographers. And they were like, “Lee, you didn’t was the heir to the Bruni wine fortune, was a huge col- have to give me a drawing, but wow.” Artists invite lector of art, on par with the Agnellis and other noble artists as I say. Italian families. He had homes scattered all over the globe: Morocco, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Rome. He LS You worked at JBJ’s Pet Shop. In my first book, Low was a fabulous, animated, openly gay man. When he Life, there’s the story of a Lower East Side gangster, discovered [Fab 5] Freddy and I, it was in the old-fash- Monk Eastman, who was really into bicycles and birds. ioned happenstance way—riding the subway trains One of his gangs was called the Squab Wheelmen. and wondering who was this mysterious Lee character This is like 1900 or so. I came across that information and the Fabulous Five. Then he read a Village Voice ad while I was aware of your store, thinking there was we had put out showcasing an unprecedented entire maybe this tradition of birds and bicycles. handball court mural that I singlehandedly painted in 1978 and stating: “Fabulous Five murals created at LQ The gentleman who opened that store was named $5.00 a square foot. Please call…” Obviously he didn’t Jerry D. He was a World War II vet with a checkered know who I was, or who we were, until the Voice ad past and kind of connected, if you know what I mean. connected the dots. He was a mysterious guy to many in the neighbor- December 1979: In a leap of faith and after a hood, but he was very generous with me. The store toast on the town, Mr. Bruni gave us our first show at was about bicycles, motorized minibikes, exotic birds his Galleria La Medusa in Rome. Fresh off the trains, and fish, and whatever else was crawling under the Fred and I hastily painted the pieces in the show at a table. I worked there from ’77 through ’82, on and off. popup studio we shared with Basqiuat down at the A man named John, who was Jerry’s surrogate son, bottom of Canal Street. The show sold out before it eventually took over the store and became a good even opened to the public. Then Claudio organized a friend and father figure over the years. He was very show at the Paolo Seno Gallery in Milan the very next overprotective of me, but it was all new to him—when year in 1980. Claudio was in charge of the Giorgio de came in to buy a drawing from me, John Chirico estate, and he and his partner, Antonio Allen, was like, “You can’t buy anything from him. He’s also had a lot of Futurist paintings and sculptures in too expensive.” He thought Keith couldn’t afford my their collection. There was not enough space in their work. John offered me a studio space on one of the townhouse on 72nd Street to house the entire collec- vacant floors above the store, and ironically it was this tion, but they made room for a few of my pieces. All endowment that upended our friendship at the time. of a sudden, my paintings were hanging alongside When I started to sell those paintings in Europe and Boccioni sculptures and De Koonings. I remember the US, and getting busy and scattered with travels, him saying, “You know, Lee, this is the most fragrant, I wasn’t around the pet store as much. I was twenty- most colorful, purest American form of art since Pop one. I was like, “This is what I’ve been doing. I’ve been art and Abstractionism. I want to support you guys.” painting trains since I was fourteen years old, and I got He was pushing us very hard in Europe when no one a chance here, you know.” knew what was going on.

LS Was that your mural on the outside of his shop? LS Was that before Patti Astor’s ?

LQ It was. I did the murals on the front facade and the LQ Way before the FUN. When we came back, Fred gates and the signage on Eldridge Street. The store and I had our first show with Josh Baer at White was dear to me because I was into building and riding Columns, our first New York show right off the heels minibikes. Like many young men throughout the LES. of the Milan show. We painted the entire gallery and The store served as a destination that fed my fixa- maybe four or five people came to the opening. Who tion with craftsmanship. I had a lot of fun there, but I was going to walk down to Spring and Greenwich was also working long hours caring for animals while Street back then? It was desolate and dark. At that being tossed in every direction, particularly within the first show in New York, the buzz was, “Lee and Fred art world. The demand was intense, I had a sold-out had a show of paintings in Europe! On canvas! Can show with Barbara in 1982 at her Fifty-Seventh Street you believe that?” I remember people going, “Yo, gallery, yet it was difficult to disengage from not only what happened?” “I don’t know. I’m just happy to be the pet store but the subways. back painting in the subway yards.” I now had money in my pockets instead of fat caps; it was pretty amaz- LS One of the things that blows my mind is that you ing. It dawned on me at that moment: This is now had the show in Rome in ’79, before anyone else your next step. had a show anywhere. Was that through Barbara Gladstone? LS It could just be a flash in the pan, right?

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(i) Fab 5 Freddy, Sex, 1980, spray paint on enamel-baked metal, 16 × 8 feet. Courtesy of Charlie Ahearn. (ii) JBJ’s Pet Shop/John’s Bike Shop, Lower East Side, 1980, spray paint on concrete and brick, 10 × 10 feet. 59 Photo by Martha Cooper. Courtesy of Charlie Ahearn. 60 Soul Train, 1975, spray paint on rolling stock, 51 × 11 feet. Courtesy of the artist. LQ Right, it could just be some novelty, some pageantry stillness of the dark with markers and spray paint.” moment. At that time, I’m like the most wanted graf- Spray paint that you didn’t have the funds to buy. So fiti writer in New York. As in WANTED, literally by the you’re thrust into criminality by having to steal your police. I’m not surprised that I’m now famous or infa- spray paint, out of necessity and tradition. Also, out of mous because of what I was doing. I knew that at that showing that you’re not some privileged kid with an point I was really making art and going against the easy way in. I came from a very decent home in a very grain no matter what anyone said. I didn’t think that rough neighborhood, but all of a sudden: Now you’re this would be the segue to the art world, but the gates one of us. Now you have to go and steal the paint, were open. It was a magical moment—confusing and steal yourself into the system. You gotta steal the fat emotional. caps that make the paint spray in wide swaths. And all that Catholic guilt started to feel like daggers in my LS Had you already been using canvas at that point? soul. (moans) Then to go sneak into the tunnels, and then serially do it again and again. It was pretty nerve- LQ No, that was the first time I had ever created paintings wracking as a fourteen-year-old kid, to be like, Wow, on canvas. They were actually burlap, some cheap- what do I do with this? I knew that it was somehow grade potato sack material, which I was surprised right when it seemed wrong. It felt like the real thing that Claudio let us paint on. We went and bought the to do at that moment. materials. He’d give us the money. We’d make paint- ings and he’d buy them from us, and then he would LS You did trains for six years? sell them in the gallery, so he was making his little kickback of course. And we were happy to be walk- LQ I did trains for ten years. I had my last official hurrah in ing home with a few thousand dollars in our pockets, ‘84, and then I threw in the towel. By that time, I was a lot of money in 1979. Oh my God. Fred was beside having my second show with Barbara in SoHo. Things himself. But he always kept his game face on. He was were really looking up. surprised and kind of shell-shocked, but he was like, “This is the way we do it.” So kudos to Fred. It was a LS Also, the city was scrubbing the trains much more great moment. We can’t even grasp it now. regularly. Sometime in the ’80s, you just stopped hav- ing that thrill of standing in Union Square and seeing LS That must have been so heady a time. You started on the trains go by. They cleaned them off right away. trains when you were fourteen? LQ Yeah, they had systematic programs of cleaning trains LQ 1974. or painting them entirely. Their maintenance always dictated that every four to five years they would have LS Did you start right away with the spray paint, or was it to paint the trains anyway. They were made out of iron markers at first? and cold rolled steel back then, and that stuff starts to decay after a while. Because of that, they went from LQ It was right away spray paint, the tool of the trade. I’ve the classic railroad red and black to the silver with the been drawing since I was five years old, on paper or blue line. Within a two-year span from 1972 to 1974, anything I could find at home. But I didn’t go outside the art went from little mosquito bites to full-on color the home with the work until 1974, after taking notice sieges of entire subway cars. They didn’t know what of what was going on as early as 1972, 1973, while to do. Where are these kids doing this? How? When? traveling with my mother on the subways. All these Why? They were just as much deer in the headlights colors, and these animated friendly bubble letters. as we were. But we had it down. I was religiously There was something youthful and unrestrained about regimented and very respectful of my environment it. Very fun. And rebellious. I never said anything to my because I knew I was coming back. I wanted to do it mother at the time, but I knew I had to engulf myself undisturbed. That was my biggest fear, being disturbed into the gray, chocolate-brown train atmosphere. The in the middle of making a piece. An unfinished piece in gloomy mist of incandescent lights. The reflective New York City, where you will see it again and again, tiles. And then this bright, colorful, beautiful, poppy is a complete embarrassment, like not knowing your stuff rapidly moving by. lines in front of a Broadway crowd. It’s excruciating, By ’74 it was explained to me by kids in the horrifying. The car had to be finished. Because of that, neighborhood. Everyone had a nickname, an alias, I was cautious about who I picked as my friends, my a nom de plume, reflecting an identity crisis among compadres, who I spoke to, what information I let out. the city’s youth. And I quickly put those thoughts together. It’s moving on the subways and yet it’s LS And the people you painted with back then, early on, on the streets. Where’s the connection? Where’s are any of them professional painters today? the meeting place? It was the salon of the spiders. Everyone was like, “This is where you do it, in the LQ The majority of the painters that were painting on

61 ART — LEE QUIÑONES subways went on to lead normal, domestic lives. The that catch, because it’s invented and cultivated and very few that stood behind—it’s an editing system pushed through those few decades of not knowing if that happens with anything that doesn’t have a mani- it was going to ever last. It was all ephemeral at that festo to describe or announce itself, right? Out of that time too. Once it left the subway yards, it was ephem- majority, a few stood behind, being curious: What is eral in theory. Am I ever going to see that train again? this about? Can I still indulge in this? Can I conduct You can’t revisit that museum. You have to bench myself in a different format, to a different audience, trains for hours to see, “Oh, yeah there it is! Get a for different reasons? And also, at the same time, look photo of it!” inside myself so that I can feel comfortable bring- ing this work out? Very intimidating, because you’re LS What are you doing now? What’s your project? now break-dancing with an intellectual, elitist crowd. Nowadays everyone can be part of the same greasy LQ Well, I’m doing half of one thing and half of another. dance, but back then it was frightening. I can see why I’m painting and really diving into sculpture. people got intimidated and fell off. And some who were great painters in the subways didn’t translate to LS Oh wow. How much of that have you done? canvas very well, and either they knew it, or people let them know it. Then you have this group, myself LQ Very little. I’ve made little maquettes. Ideas for shows included, that now is in the spotlight. The question and or public site-specific installations that I want to is, How do I translate the very honest, juvenile, happy do. But I’m painting using subliminal letters and mes- moment of just painting, constructing my life, in a col- sages in the background. I love music. I love listening orful, geometric way and with the letters in dialogue to lyrics. I love reading whenever I can. So all those with the art world, within its intellect? Whereas no things eventually fuse themselves into these paintings one was questioning me in the studio of the subway and drawings. I still have my studio practice here in tunnels. No one was even there. I’m there by myself. Brooklyn. I had a great pop-up show of early and cur- I had control of this whole thing. So it was a learning rent work with Nicole Klagsbrun on the LES in 2015. curve that was quite honestly difficult for me. There Nicole is a silent thunder in the arts. My show with her were moments of self-destruction, but I had the ambi- helped bridge my past and present work in a more in- tion to move forward. I had to look deeper and go into depth conversation. And I just came off my first solo my fears, my relations, my history, questioning things. show in Los Angeles at the Charlie James Gallery. And saying, You know what, I can talk about this now. I can be relevant in this conversation. Because I come LS I got the announcement. from a world of many colors. I don’t come from a privileged background. My running joke is that I don’t LQ Which came off—you might dig this—the litter of my come with a BFA or MFA, I come from the MTA. We studio walls. I just write on my walls. Jean [Basquiat] as a collective, and we, meaning just a few of us, would cross out letters, supposedly, so that you didn’t reference art history, because we were mak- could look at them more closely. I cross them out ing art history. There are great things that come out because I misspell them. (laughter) Because in that of looking back and making references and collaging fleeting moment of ideas, I don’t want to lose it, so together what you have—but we never had that luxury I gotta write it real fast. And I know I’m misspelling because we never knew it was there. I was making something. And I’ll cross it out. All this stuff ends up what was dear to me, what was really affecting me, on the walls in my studio in its purity. Mary Boone which now has anchors in history. And household- came by almost three years ago and said, “This is name artists can look back and say, Oh, yeah, now we a masterpiece in itself. This whole wall.” And I was get it. It may be a recollection of something that hap- like, “That’s where I’m testing my spray paint.” I’m pened a hundred years ago, or two hundred, but we throwing stuff at it: tea, boogers, whatever. I’m writ- get how close that is, how peripheral that history is, ing stuff as it comes. Ex-girlfriends are writing, “I that time, where we were as people of color, with dis- hate you,” along my “I loved you.” I write all this stuff enfranchised family issues that made us do what we because I’m either going to make it into a painting or did. I strongly believe that breakthroughs in art come it feeds paintings down the road. And Mary sees it, from places of courage, places of—what would you wants to do a show, then it just doesn’t turn out to be say? Difficulty. for whatever reason. The last words she said to me were, “Hi, Lee. So nice to see you.” What a gentle LS Improvisation? shutdown.

LQ Yup, exactly. You have to think in between all the dis- LS Oh wow. tractions. You start getting little snippets, and then you start to feel it’s got some meat and potatoes to LQ And several years later, just a little over a year ago, it. It’s been like chum in the waters for a while, to get I meet Charlie James from Los Angeles at PPOW’s

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(i) Tablet #2, 2005–2018, spray paint and ink on gypsum, 15 × 21 inches. (ii) Tablet #6, 2005–2018, spray paint, acrylic, paint marker, ink, and pencil on gypsum, 14.75 × 20.75 inches. Courtesy of Charlie 63 James Gallery, Los Angeles. booth at Art Basel in Florida. And right off we just LQ There are a lot of struggles in the world. People started goofing. Just talking. I’m thinking, He’s a pushed into corners. You’re depriving people of live- small gallery; he’s probably trying to see what’s on lihoods and morals and religion and culture. When the playing field. He says, “I’d really love to come to you become a culture that destroys culture, what your studio.” So he comes. He later turned me on to kind of culture is that? I’m questioning that in these so many great LA artists that he shows, like Sadie paintings. That’s where I’m at now. But I’m all over Barnette, Ramiro Gomez, and Patrick Martinez. He the map because I like loitering in different places. has an incredible eye. He sees the same work that Oh, here’s the second part: The subway movement Mary had seen three years before and says, “That’s came mainly from places of hurt, yet also of curiosity, the piece.” So kudos and a wink to her eye. places of unanswered questions, in your living condi- tions and in how you interact with people in a city like LS It’s your notebooks, right? this. How can I get my message across by formulating my letters and composing them into two-dimensional LQ Yeah, it’s my soundboard. I’m like, “I’m just writing sculptures? I often have to defend myself against the stuff. I don’t even know what I wrote.” He’s like, “How nostalgia for my time in history. People who seem- can we do a show with this?” And I was like, “I’ll just ingly know better still try to paint me into their corners cut out the wall.” I felt like Felix the Cat or something, of nostalgia. cutting these slabs out. Mind you, I’m not just cut- ting slabs. I’m trying to make paintings out of what’s LS Yeah, it happened in X year, and you’re stuck there for already there, like, Oh man, I love that but it’s a hor- the rest of your life. rible background, and two inches away is another part of me just testing paint, and that looks beautiful. I had LQ That’s it. Even though I’m doing other things physi- to excavate as I was editing. Or rather curate a show. cally, mentally, aesthetically, conceptually. That’s a I ended up with fifteen slabs from that. And I knew great moment for us to have among ourselves in a bar, how I would frame and seal them. I work with a great but you shouldn’t dictate that my legacy is stagnant fabricator and framer in Brooklyn, East Frames, whose within one era only. That old work that you’re refer- family from Japan have been framing since the 1930s. encing was once new. What are you getting out of this They were like, “Wow, this is kind of crazy, Lee. We’ve if you’re just staying in that moment? If you think that never done this. But we love it.” I love crazy. I love dis- back in 1975, I had some kind of power in what I was covering new things with people that seemingly have doing. Why wouldn’t you believe that I have power in seen everything. And they came out beautiful. what I’m doing now? You’re denying my ability to be Now I can’t wait to get back to working with accepted as a painter, as an artist, and you’re denying found objects, mainly computers, their motherboards. yourself the ability to realize how work can transcend I’m composing all these abstractions as a background, its era. How work can respect its past by arriving at and then painting on top of them. I’ve secretly been the present and spilling into the future. doing them since 1996. I’m creating those at the same time that I’m making little maquettes for public LS You’ve reinvented yourself continuously over decades. installations. LQ It’s all experimentation. I’m still experimenting. I don’t LS Is this what you’re referring to as sculptures? have it all in one nutshell. I don’t have the complete answers. LQ It could be considered sculpture, but to me it’s just creating layers. Creating a platform for what I want LS That’s what art is. It’s continuous. You never get to the to paint or write. In one piece I want to collaborate place where you can stop. Until you’re dead. with two people, maybe three: Lenny 2000, Al Diaz, and I’ll keep the third one to myself for now. I’m LQ When Nicole and then Charlie said, “I want to do a really excited about doing them. They’re speaking out show with you,” I felt that I had arrived at a juncture on environmental issues. Labor issues. Immigration where I could comfortably show something from the and privacy violations. And how we work with each past without it overshadowing what I’m about right other through technology but still long to go back to now. There’s a process. And it takes time. It gives the dinosaur age, when we looked at people face to you confidence, even when you’re not aware that face. You don’t know who’s on the other side of that you’re doing something. So yeah, I like to imagine that phone or computer unless you can look in their eyes. there are people out there who will maybe even think Everything is ephemeral now. Words are weaponized. beyond what I can think and see something in these Everybody’s fucking angry, I believe, because we are cuttings from my studio wall. I believe that art is never lost in the fog of convenience. finished because it’s all subjective. But someone can see something else that takes it further. And I might LS Or depressed. learn something from it.

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