David Wojnarowicz, Bad Moon Rising, 1989

David Wojnarowicz: This is called Bad Moon Rising and it was in response to being diagnosed. There’s a little house in the upper left-hand corner that blows up in the lower right-hand corner, it’s a house on an atomic testing range. There’s also two images of sexuality: one that’s being put into negative like there’s things like radioactivity, disease, stuff like that. There’s a clock that slowly rises, becoming a blood cell.

David Breslin: In the background are fake dollar bills that he made, like the maps that he includes in a lot of his paintings.

Narrator: David Breslin.

David Breslin: Currency was something Wojnarowicz used because it was something that everyone knows, but it was also something that really is a symbol and a shorthand for many complex, both economic and human, relations. On top of these dollar bills, he's painted a nude figure with no feet, no head, with hands bound behind him.

And this is the way that Saint Sebastian has been traditionally configured. Sebastian who was a Christian martyr, very early Christian martyr, is typically rendered as one who's been pierced by arrows and left to die. This was a very important image for Wojnarowicz.

This was a symbol not only of desire, but also the idea of this figure who would care so much about his ideal and mission that he would die for it.