Andy Warhol Museum Hosts ~ The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974-84

Saturday, 12 August 2006 07:50

Pittsburgh, PA - In 1949, Andy Warhol left his hometown of Pittsburgh to take a chance at a life as an artist in New York City.  He was not alone.  For more than 150 years, New York has been an epicenter of creativity and a hotspot to which artists, painters, writers and performers have flocked. One decade, from 1974 to 1984, is the subject of The Andy Warhol Museum’s summer exhibition, The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974-84, on view through October 22, 2006.  The exhibition is organized by the Grey Art Gallery and Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University and is curated by Paper magazine senior editor and popular-culture critic, Carlo McCormick.

The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974-84 is the first substantial retrospective of ten critically important years in New York’s Downtown district— a time when a new, postmodern attitude towards artistic production began to surface.   Emerging in the aftermath of the Summer of Love and coming to a close with the re-election of Ronald Reagan, the Downtown scene in New York attracted artists, musicians, performers, filmmakers, writers and others who could afford the then-low rents of Lower East Side tenements and SoHo lofts.  In a rapidly evolving landscape, these artists ferociously churned out work that was populist and subversive, utopian and raw, antic and angry. 

The Downtown Show features approximately 175 artists and includes more than 375 paintings, sculpture, drawings, videos and photographs — as well as more than 70 items from Fales Library, New York University’s rare book and manuscript collection.  Represented artists include: Vito Acconci, Karen Finley, Cindy Sherman, David Wojnarowicz, Kiki Smith, Jenny Holzer, Nan Goldin, Patti Smith, Nam June Paik, Keith Haring, Richard Hell, Carolee Schneemann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and many others.  Music selections will feature punk, but also reference minimalism and techno.

“The Warhol is the perfect venue for this remarkable exhibition because the show is permeated by Andy Warhol’s spirit and influence,” says John Smith, assistant director for collections and research at The Andy Warhol Museum.  “Although by 1974, Warhol was a decidedly “Uptown” artist — meaning he was financially successful and embraced by the art world establishment — he never lost his “Downtown” credibility.”

The many barriers between high and low culture that Warhol broke in the 1960s, were further exploited by the artists of the next generation, says Smith.  “Furthermore, Warhol’s example of how an artist could successfully move between multiple mediums and forms of expression became particularly relevant for the artists featured in this exhibition who easily moved between music, theater, visual art, performance, poetry and filmmaking.”

Exhibition
It was in the mid-1970s that a distinctive “Downtown attitude” toward both art and life could be identified.  Rather than completely overthrowing established forms, Downtown artists sought to undermine from within the familiar structures of artistic genres and the complacent culture that had grown up around them.  Influenced by the Beats and New York School artists as well as hippies, Marxists, and anarchists, Downtown artists pushed the limits of traditional artistic categories — visual artists were also writers; writers were developing performance pieces; performers were incorporating video into their work; and everyone was in a band.

In keeping with the experimental spirit of these multiple practices, the exhibition is organized into eight themes.   Presented ‘salon style’ this framing invokes the invigorating dissonance of the Downtown scene.  The eight sections comprise: 1.) Interventions — a preface and introduction that posits a connection between the proliferation of not-for-profit exhibition venues and artworks engaging Downtown urban settings and architecture; 2.) Broken Stories — a fresh look at the innovative narrative techniques developed during the decade by writers, filmmakers and visual artists; 3.) De-Signs — an investigation of the artistic use of advertising’s shorthand signs and strategies; 4.) Salon de Refuse — a section that brings together works that harnessed the surrounding detritus to create a “trash culture” that challenged traditional hierarchical distinctions; 5.) Body Politics — a presentation of art concerned with sexuality and identity politics; 6.) Sublime Time — an exploration of the period’s search for the sublime in the wake of minimalism’s reductive and formal concept of beauty; 7.) The Portrait Gallery — featuring photographic, sculptural and painted images of key Downtown figures; and in conclusion, 8.) The Mock Shop — a recreation of the stores—featuring lost-cost artists’ multiples and other works—that critiqued consumer culture in many Downtown shows and collaborations.

Interspersed throughout is a rich array of Fales Library’s archival material—artists’ journals as well as exhibition announcements, posters and other ephemera—which together represent not only a significant body of the period’s material cultural, but also vivid reminders of its personal histories.

Visit The Andy Warhol Museum at : www.warhol.org