While Jean-Michel Basquiat was tagging “SAMO” all over lower Manhattan and graff artist Dondi subway trains citywide, self-proclaimed “alien” Klaus Nomi was simultaneously playing his brand of operatic new wave at the Mudd Club and Karen Finley smearing herself with kidney beans at P.S. 122 in her “I’m An Ass Man.” The New Museum’s East Village USA exhibition attempts to make sense of this explosion of jumbled, intertwined art movements that descended upon the East Village during the eighties. It was a scene composed of the traditional arts but following some of the lessons of the tangential SoHo scene a decade before expanded to any artistic media its participants could find, or invent. Filled with hybrids of rock and symphonic minimalism, poet-painters, rocker-performance artists as well as alternative “lifestyle-artists,” the East Village in the 80s was a cornucopia of creative energy.
The era might be considered in relation to present New York’s burgeoning art movements that in many ways take inspiration from it, be it Williamsburg’s resurgent rock scene (the “Yes New York” compilation a couple years back a direct homage to the classic 1978 “no wave” compilation “No New York”), the African-American boho renaissances of both Harlem and Bed-Stuy, the black afro-punk movement in particular, or Brooklyn’s art and performance spaces, all of which owe something to the DIY spirit of this East Village of lore.
East Village USA contains the work of over 75 artists, revisiting the period’s painting and sculpture while expanding to consider music, film, and performance art. Filled with video, listening stations, compelling photo montage and documentary materials, it covers movements from graffiti art and punk rock to Neo-Expressionism and “appropriation” art. Many of the players are well known—Jenny Holzer, represented by early “Truisms” posters—“Expressing anger is necessary,” and an intriguing collaboration with Lady Pink, Richard Prince, Fab Five Freddy, Nan Goldin photographs that would make up her seminal “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” Keith Haring, Kiki Smith, Jeff Koons. Some are not as well known but beloved—Lypsinka (John Epperson), Tseng Kwong Chi (from a fascinating series of self-portraits), graff visionary Zephyr, and Ethyl Eichelberger. Martin Wong’s “Attorney Street (Handball Court)” with a poem scrawled by Miguel Piñero, graces the entrance hall and is indeed such an intricate, layered piece that it justifies the New Museum using it in previous shows.
Of course, this was a different time—the East Village of the 80s was a bastion of crime, drug dealing, cheap rents, and a cache of hipness for only the tough skinned, wild at heart, or desperate. Art thrived because everything seemed possible and no one cared what the rules governing an art scene were—it was eclectic, inclusive, and schizophrenic. It was in this environment P.S. 122 was born in a former school on 1st avenue and evolved into the legendary performance space that nurtured Eric Bogosian, Penny Arcade, and Spaulding Gray. Futura 2000, Crash, Daze, and other graff writers came out of the subway yards and showed art in galleries. Fashion Moda (actually from the South Bronx), CoLab—with its 1980 watershed Times Square Show, and neighborhood stalwart ABC No Rio were all formed.
Basquiat had worked on Glenn Obrien’s notorious “TV Party” cable access show and starred in Edo Bertoglio’s Downtown 81, a great cinematic chronicle of the time. Its Alphabet City makes Travis Bickle’s Times Square look like Minneapolis. Portraying a barely veiled version of himself, Basquiat traverses the streets, squatting in apartments, hitting the Mudd Club and random “art happenings.” A shot on the avenues below 14th street drew gasps during a screening a few years back, revealing a world more resembling a war-torn wasteland than the homogenized East Village we’ve come to know.
Charlie Ahearn’s Wild Style was a parallel chronicle of the burgeoning graffiti and rap phenomenon. Patti Astor has a bit role as a reporter chasing the scene in its infancy all over the South Bronx. Astor’s FUN Gallery, run out of a tiny basement storefront with Bill Stelling, was one of the original galleries to show graffiti art and many East Village dilettantes. Kenny Scharf’s first show was there, as were those of Futura, Rammellzee, and Lee Quinones (star of Wild Style). This was another world: Astor speaks of knives stuck in her face by prospective show artists, the neighborhood mob coming around for payoffs, heroin addicts passed out in the doorway, trash cans through the window.
Then the tidal wave of galleries and a “scene” moved in and before the decade was out rents had skyrocketed, 2nd avenue resembled a hipster mall, and real estate became laughably unaffordable. The galleries dropped graffiti artists as quickly as they’d jumped on the bandwagon and along with the artists who had set the influx in motion ran for the hills, leaving everyone with, well, the East Village we know today.
Though the new artists were carpetbaggers they actualized a sense of the urban poor mixing with the avant-garde. Gracie Mansion attempted to democratize the art scene with her roster of Mike Bidio’s appropriations, David Wojnarowicz’s America gone wrong, and artists who used street culture in their work, or were from the streets themselves. The gallery dealt from her apartment’s bathroom, and even once from a parked limousine in the street.
There has been a great deal of interest of late in the Reagan-era East Village. New Museum über curator Dan Cameron chose 2004 for this mammoth retrospective of a seeming random era in New York art history. (Why not 1970s SoHo, or the 1960s East Village?) In an interview last year in The Believer Roots drummer ?uestlove opined that the 80s crack epidemic and Reagan in particular were great for hip-hop culture—fed a burst of creativity that fueled rap music’s “golden years.” Much the same might be said of the East Village in the 80s—crime, cheap rents, a feeling of being under siege from a conservative administration, the AIDS epidemic—these all produced a burst of artistic activity and sense of community not seen since the Harlem Renaissance, Warhol 60s or the Abstract Expressionists invaded Greenwich Village. Perhaps the time is ripe for East Village USA because, in the midst of a recession, facing an administration draconian in its attitude towards civil liberties and social issues, an unpopular war, the New York art community is faced with many of the same issues artists confronted during the 1980s. Perhaps Cameron wants implicitly to make this connection. AIDS, though no longer necessarily raging through the gay community, is surely on the rise amongst minority women, and in this age of the global community, more than raging through the nations of Africa.
The art bursting from the East Village screamed to be heard, often confused, angry. Interdisciplinary art was the expressive mode of choice, the better to include every walk of life, reach out to the streets, mass culture, youth, one’s heroes, as well the denizens of high art. And, shit, have a helluva lot great out-of-control parties and happenings. It seems Keith Haring spent as much time dancing the night away at Paradise Garage and tagging on the subway as he did painting in a studio, and no doubt felt all said activity was a part of his artistic identity. He had died from AIDS by 1990, as did eventually Paul Thek, Nicolas Moufarrege, and David Wojnarowicz. Basquiat blew up like a rocket, paid for soup, built his fort, and then set it on fire—his heroin(e).
The spirit with which these individuals channeled artistic expression is now standard fare in New York, if not the world—“happenings,” the DIY spirit, home galleries & ragtag performance spaces, utilizing out-of-the-way neighborhoods, constantly questioning the nature of art and who should be its gatekeepers. Brooklyn’s Rubulad and Lunatarium parties come to mind, and those crazy Complacent cats. Spaces like Dollhaus, CAVE, BPM, GV/AS, even Galapagos, all reek of the spirit of the 80s East Village even when displaying rampant consumerism more indicative of Virgin Megastore. Galleries and restaurants spring up in Bed-Stuy like wildfire as the neighborhood morphs into a frontier where cheap space can be found. Long Island City, with factory spaces and proximity to Manhattan, has become an obvious destination for artists in search of space and a sense of community. The art collectives of industrial Bushwick—OfficeOps, Aqui the Bushwick, Combustive Motor Corporation, sprang up in response to the gentrification of Williamsburg before that neighborhood had actually even finished over-developing itself.
Comparing art epochs is pointless—histories are revisionist, defining the “now” malleable, especially as it is occurring. I pine for the East Village of lore I’ve read about, viewed in movies, heard spoken of, even though I know a lot of it is probably romantic bullshit. The cursory art scenes of present New York City often disappoint me even as I spend loads of time getting my mind blown at CAVE, or drinking forties and absinthe at loft happenings in Long Island City.
East Village USA is an overwhelming mish-mash of spliced together movements, but nevertheless a spirited tribute to a seminal time in art historical inclusiveness. A time many of us might do well to emulate.
(An altered, shorter version of this piece first appeared as a Critique in the year-end double issue of L Magazine.)