What was it like to be an artist in 1970s SoHo? How did you spend your evenings? Where did you go for coffee, or to see your friends perform? Performa founding director and chief curator RoseLee Goldberg and curator-at-large Defne Ayas present a walking tour, inviting audiences to step into the energies of New York’s downtown art scene of the 1970s. Together, participants will learn about a neighborhood that was transformed from a deserted industrial district into a unique urban setting by hundreds of artists living in close walking distance from one another; painters, performers, sculptors, filmmakers, poets, choreographers, musicians, and writers. Walking the streets today means meeting friendly ghosts outside every building, remembering conversations, feeling the past in every step, being intensely present in the city that never stops reinventing itself.
Here’s are a few places to begin the story, to set the stage, told by RoseLee.
New York in the 1970s was irresistible. My first visit was in the fall of 1972, and my first night in town was spent at Max’s Kansas City. There was Robert Smithson, lounging against the bar, in conversation with Vito Acconci. Lucy Lippard was at a table with friends (the tablecloths were red and white checks, on the table was a small bowl of chickpeas, always refilled). Warhol was nearby, and upstairs were more people, including Lou Reed and too many others to mention. The art world was small and informal enough at that time to be able to make a phone call and arrange a studio visit: Brice Marden, Robert Ryman, Jennifer Bartlett, Merce Cunningham, Simone Forti, Carolee Schneemann. I was in and out of the so-called dance building on Broadway – watched Trisha Brown in rehearsal, met with Lucinda Childs, attended a Deborah Hay concert in a basement studio on 14th Street, and much more.
I was director of the gallery at the Royal College of Art at the time, so it made it easy to call and introduce myself. Four years later, I moved to New York. I was determined to live in a loft, and soon (through The Village Voice) I did: 2,000 square feet on Mercer Street for $200 a month. SoHo was very quiet, almost empty of people during the workweek. Factories on the first floor of every building, artists’ lofts above, few streetlights, three bars, two restaurants, one bodega on Prince Street and West Broadway, and a walk to LaGuardia Place to buy the New York Times. Few people ventured to SoHo during the week, fewer at night. Visitors came downtown on Saturdays for gallery openings at 420 West Broadway, or at Paula Cooper’s on Wooster Street. Us locals never went above 14th Street (except to visit museums or a doctor’s office). We owned downtown.
We will begin our tour at my first loft, which was on the fourth floor of 121 Mercer Street. It’s still there – the only building on the block that remains untouched. Each floor was owned by an Abstract Expressionist: Wilfrid Zogbaum, Herman Cherry, Robert Motherwell. The basement was briefly occupied by German artist Blinky Palermo; and Katharina Sieverding spent a month or two there. Joan Jonas lived a few buildings down and across the street (she still does), Donald Judd was on the corner of Spring and Mercer, and Jonas Mekas was three blocks down, with Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota just streets away.
There’s much too much to tell. The above describes a week, a month. Decades later, the stories from that time pile up, mountain ranges of them – the 1980s, the 90s, the 2000s. An art city like no other. I am forever a resident of downtown New York.
