URT

THE HISTORY OF ARTISTS AND ART PRODUCTION OF LOWER MANHATTAN

Created by DANIELLE FICHERA OCTOBER 12TH, 2011

The History of Artists and Art Production of Lower Manhattan - featured image

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Originally inspired by the New Museum's Bowery Artist Tribute, my project examines the history of artists and art production of lower Manhattan. The artists who entered lower Manhattan in the mid-1960s established a cultural hothouse. Soho, in particular, became an educational arena where people would learn and inadvertently teach one another all the time (Kosetelanetz 39). Soho operated in "a de facto anarchist community" (Kosetelanetz 40). There was no hierarchy, no tests, and no degrees, but there was the unity found in universities. No one ever planned on it becoming an artist enclave. “Although the creation of a single work of art maybe an individual effort, artists have often clustered together to share ideas, offer mutual support and provide a sympathetic audience (James R. Hudson, The Anticipated City, 1987)”, perhaps no where is this (collaboration) more evident then in Soho. What effect did the artists living in SoHo have on one another? Was there a cohesive body of work produced by the artists living in SoHo during the 1960s? And, what effect did artists living in SoHo have on the city of New York? Artists living in SoHo during the late 1950s and 1960s transformed New York's lower downtown into a cultural arena, which enabled the transformation from a wasteland to a culturally rich community. The first phase of my project reveals the close network of mostly Fluxus artists (1960-), that helped to gentrify SoHo. And, the second and final phase of my project examines the New York School (1940-1960) l of artists. After completing the first phase of my project, I realized that it in order to fully understand the gentrification of lower Manhattan, I had to explore the cultural and poltical climate of the 1940s and 1950s in New York. My project is an examination of how New York's art world of the 40's, 50s, 60s and 70s transformed downtown Manhattan from wastelands to a culturally rich neighnorhood full of high end lofts, fashionable boutiques, trendy restaurents and galleries. My project also examines how the art that was created during the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s was a direct reflection of the social and enviromental factors of New York's deteriortaitng urban landscape full of abandoned buildings, poverty and neglect in lower Manhattan. 

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