The Downtown Show now on view at the Grey Art Gallery at NYU presents an amazing and definitive collection of works and personalities that made up the New York art scene, 1974-1984.
“Lifestyle was as much a creative practice [then] as putting time in the studio,” says pop culture critic
and curator Carlo McCormick, the guest curator of the Downtown Show. Opening a café, playing in a band, scouring dumpsters for a flamboyant outfit to wear at Danceteria, all these creative acts weren’t “tangibly fine art practices, but they could bring together in one room a bunch of cool, creative people, and a certain amount of hybridity would come of that.” So writers hanging out with musicians started bands, or artists starred in movies or did performance art..." (The Villager).
From the show's site: "...the Downtown scene attracted painters, sculptors, photographers, musicians, performers, filmmakers, and writers who could afford the then-low rents of SoHo lofts and Lower East Side tenements. Downtown artists violated the gap between high art and mass culture, removed the production and reception of avant-garde art from isolation in elite circles, and directly confronted social and political concerns. Creating work that was both populist and subversive as well as utopian and raw, they irreverently pushed the limits of traditional artistic categories—visual artists were also writers, writers developed performance pieces, performers incorporated videos into their works, and everyone was in a band."
Don't miss the Sublime Time Playlist, and The Downtown Show's iMix on the iTunes Music Store!
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