The Downtown Show: The NYCart Scene : 1974-84

Thursday, 16 March 2006 10:33

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 May 27 through September 3, 2006. The exhibition is organized by the Grey Art Gallery and Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University (where it is currently on view through April 1) and is curated by 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. They adopted an anarchic approach that violated the gap between high art and mass culture, sought to remove avant-garde art from its isolation within elite circles, emphasized speed of execution over technical proficiency, and addressed social and political concerns head-on. 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. “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, “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.” Visit The Andy Warhol Museum

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