The Downtown Book

Downtown is more than just a location, it's an attitude - and in the 1970s and '80s, that attitude forever changed the face of America. This book charts the intricate web of influences that shaped the generation of experimental and outsider artists working in Downtown New York during the crucial decade from 1974 to 1984. Published in conjunction with the first major exhibition of downtown art (organized by New York University's Grey Art Gallery and Fales Library), "The Downtown Book" brings the Downtown art scene to life, exploring everything from Punk rock to performance art. The book probes trends that arose in the 1970s and solidified New York's reputation as arbiter of the postmodern American avant-garde. By 1974, the hippie euphoria of the previous decade, with its optimism, free love, and paeans to personal fulfillment, was over. In its place emerged a new kind of experimentation - in art, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The seven essays featured here examine from different perspectives how Downtown artists constantly pushed the limits of both traditional media and the art world. Art critic Carlo McCormick addresses the energy, power, drugs, and nonstop erotic motion that propelled the scene. Music historian Bernard Gendron explores how minimalism, loft jazz, and Punk all occupied the same Downtown spaces. RoseLee Goldberg, the noted scholar and critic of performance art, looks back at ten years of its ascendancy Downtown. English professor Robert Siegle casts a critical eye on the literature of the Downtown scene. Librarian and archivist Marvin J. Taylor surveys Downtown as both geography and metaphor, and grapples with the question of how best to organize and preserve materials that often challenge the very notion of the archive. The book also includes seminal essays on the critical theories underlying Downtown art, by Brian Wallis; and on Downtown film, by Matthew Yokobosky. The essays are intercut with personal reminiscences by such renowned pioneers of the Downtown scene as Eric Bogosian, Richard Hell, Lydia Lunch, Ann Magnuson, Michael Musto, and Martha Wilson. More than 150 striking photographs feature Downtown denizens and galleries; works by Cindy Sherman, Keith Haring, and many other artists; and hotspots such as CBGBs and Club 57. Hip and provocative, "The Downtown Book" provides a rare glimpse into the cauldron of the New York artistic counterculture - and the colorful characters who inhabited it. Exhibition schedule: Grey Art Gallery and the Fales Library New York University January 10 - April 1, 2006, The Andy Warhol Museum Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Mid-May to September 4, 2006, Austin Museum of Art Austin, Texas November 11, 2006 - January 28, 2007 (tentative dates).

ISBN 0691122865   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9780691122861 (What's this?)   Pages 208 Publisher Princeton University Press   Volumes 1 Imprint Princeton University Press   Weight (grammes) 628 Format Hardback   Published in New Jersey Publication date 17 Oct 2005   Height (mm) 203 Writer of foreword Lynn Gumpert   Width (mm) 203 Library of Congress 2005046574   Spine width (mm) 16 DEWEY 709.747109047   Academic level General, Tertiary education, Professional / Scholarly

		Foreword by Lynn Gumpert		9
		Playing the field : the downtown scene and cultural production, an introduction by Marvin J. Taylor		17
		The downtown music scene by Bernard Gendron		41
		Ann Magnuson		46
		Chi Chi Valenti		64
		A crack in time by Carol McCormick		67
		Gracie Mansion		82
		Sur Rodney (Sur)		83
		Lydia Lunch		95
		Art after hours : downtown performance by Roselee Goldberg		97
		Joe Lewis		104
		Martha Wilson		110
		Not a part of any wave : no wave cinema by Matthew Yokobosky		117
		Sarah Schulman		129
		Writing downtown by Robert Siegle		131
		Richard Hell		137
		Eric Bogosian		145
		What's wrong with this picture? by Brian Wallis		155
		Lynne Tillman		170
		Afterword and acknowledgements by Lynn Gumpert and Marvin J. Taylor		172
		Chronology by Ian Alteveer		176
		Michael Musto		192

The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984 celebrates the era's creative commotion, much of it scattershot and under the mainstream radar. -- "New York Times Style Magazine For readers with an interest in New York's art history, the detailed chronology alone makes the book essential source material. -- Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle

 Be the first to write a customer review