Project Proposal: The History of Artists and Art Production in Lower Manhattan

In September of 2011, I began to research and map the history of artists and art production in SoHo. My project allowed me to explore the close network of artists that worked to gentrify lower Manhattan. When I began my project in September of 2011, I began researching the artists that first settled in SoHo. In my research, I discovered that Fluxus founder George Maciunas established the first artist co-operative in SoHo at 80 Wooster Street. My initial idea was to examine the artists associated with the New York School, as opposed to the artists associated with Fluxus. However, this class has taught me that often our research dictates our path. As much as I wanted to examine the artists associated with the New York School, my research kept directing towards George Maciunas and Fluxus. In retrospect, Fluxus was a great place to start. Maciunas was excellent at keeping records of the people, places and performances associated with Fluxus. By having access to Maciunas’ records allowed me to easily map the network of Fluxus artists.

The Fluxus artists who entered Soho in the mid-1960s established a cultural hothouse. SoHo became an educational arena where people would learn and inadvertently teach one another all the time (Kosetelanetz 40). The first part of my project captured the key players who participated in the Fluxus Art Movement during the 1960s. Upon the completion of the first phase of my project, I began to realize that even though my map had succeeded at revealing a close network of artists that lived and worked together to create art, my project failed to examine what preceded the Fluxus Art Movement that allowed for George Maciunas to enter and create such a strong community. Having built a strong network of artists in the first phase of my project, I now feel confident I will be able to explore the relationships that came before Fluxus.
The second phase of my project will explore the links between the New York School and Fluxus. The New York School, like Fluxus was a moment in time when enough artists seemed to converge in a loose community, with sufficient aggressive energy to create a new kind of art (Ashton 1). Composer Morton Feldman said, “There were both bohemians (or loft rate) and Right Bank guys. I was aware I was involved in a movement of some kind which was not just the Club. Personalities didn’t seem to change the fact that there was a movement going on” (Ashton 2-3). By the 1960s there was almost nothing left of the New York School. In the spring of 1961, a party was given by three of the most celebrated New York School painters. It represented the end of an era, and something new was about to emerge. In the second phase of my project, I will explore the key figures that fused the transition between the artists of the New York School and Fluxus. Composer John Cage played a crucial role in Fluxus, but also drew a record crowd when he gave his “Lecture on Nothing” at the New York School’s “Club”. The New York School artist recognized and appreciated his “unshakeable determination to pursue his own individuality” (Ashton 224). Kiesler, Kline, Ferren, Pollock and de Kooning all showed up to hear Cage’s lecture.
After spending an entire semester understanding the role George Maciunas and Fluxus played in the development of lower Manhattan, I now feel it is necessary to take my project to the next level. In addition to mapping the artists associated with the New York School, I would like to revisit many of the Fluxus artists that were not given enough attention or may have been overlooked due to time or lack of information in the first phase of my project.
In 1970 nearly twenty years after the demise of the New York School, and at the tail end of the Fluxus Art Movement, the Alternative Art Movement emerged. A result of the Alternative Art Movement was the birth of 112 Workshop (1970), The Kitchen (1971), P.S. 1 (1971), Artist Space (1972), A.I.R. Gallery (1972) and Creative Time (1972). In 1970 New York City faced bankruptcy, a rising crime rate and faced with a deteriorating urban landscape full of abandoned buildings that stretched from Wall Street out to the boroughs (Gookin 16). In the midst of this poverty and neglect came a group of non-profit organizations that allowed artists to test out new forms of art and media. These organizations emerged as a result of the New York School and Fluxus. It seems only necessary for me to include the group of non-profit organizations on my map.
 

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