[2] After a short period of formal training as a painter at the New York Studio School, he dropped out and immersed himself in the world of underground film and music.

The work features words from a famous line in Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now, based on the Joseph Conrad novel Heart of Darkness.

"[9] Although Wool is best known as a painter, he has amassed a large body of black-and-white photographs taken at night in the streets between the Lower East Side and Chinatown.

[10] In 2012, Wool contributed the set design for Moving Parts, a piece conceived by Benjamin Millepied's L.A. Dance Project.

From October 25, 2013 to January 22, 2014, a retrospective of Wool's work was exhibited at The Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago in the spring of 2014.

[12] Wool has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome (1989), served as a DAAD Berlin Artist-in-Residence (1992), and received the Wolfgang Hahn Prize.

[7] In November 2013, art dealer Christophe van de Weghe bought Apocalypse Now (1988) for $26.4 million on behalf of a client at Christie's New York.