(Ebook) Artists’ SoHo: 49 Episodes of Intimate History by Richard Kostelanetz ISBN 9780823262823, 0823262820

(Ebook) Artists’ SoHo: 49 Episodes of Intimate History by Richard Kostelanetz ISBN 9780823262823, 0823262820

During the 1960s & 1970s in New York City, young artists exploited an industrial wasteland to create spacious studios where they lived & worked, redefining the Manhattan area just south of Houston Street. Its use fueled not by city planning schemes but by word-of-mouth recommendations, the area soon grew to become a world-class center for artistic creation indeed, the largest urban artists' colony ever in America--let alone the world.

Richard Kostelanetz's Artists' SoHo not only examines why the artists came & how they accomplished what they did but also delves into the lives & works of some of the most creative personalities who lived there during that period, including Nam June Paik, Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman, Hannah Wilke, George Macuinas, & Alan Suicide. Gallerists followed the artists in fashioning themselves, their homes, their buildings, & even their streets into transiently prominent exhibition & performance spaces.

SoHo pioneer Richard Kostelanetz's extensively researched intimate history is framed within a personal memoir that unearths myriad perspectives: social & cultural history, the changing rules for residency & ownership, the ethos of the community, the physical layouts of the lofts, the types of art produced, venues that opened & closed, the daily rhythm, & the gradual invasion of "new people." Artists' SoHoalso explores how & why this fertile bohemia couldn't last forever. As wealthier people paid higher prices, galleries left, younger artists settled elsewhere, & the neighborhood became a "SoHo Mall" of trendy stores & restaurants.

Compelling & often humorous, Artists' SoHo provides an analysis of a remarkable neighborhood that transformed the art & culture of New York City over the past five decades.