Ana Mendieta @ Marian Goodman Gallery, NYC - 'Back to the Source' Exhibition

Ana Mendieta 

Back to the Source 

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

Through 17 January 2026

Ana Mendieta 

Untitled: Silueta Series, 1977

© The Estate of Ana Mendieta 

Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery

Plugging into Mexico was like going back to the source, being able to get some magic just by being there. – Ana Mendieta

Marian Goodman Gallery presents Back to the Source, the gallery inaugural exhibition of the work of Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) which is on view in their Tribeca space through 17 January 2026.

Back to the Source presents seminal works from 1972-1985, a prolific period of Mendieta’s work, spanning stages of time spent in Iowa, Mexico, and Cuba, including ten digitally remastered films, photographic works, newly available photographic prints and drawings, and ephemeral sculpture.

Ana Mendieta was a pioneer and innovator whose oeuvre spanned painting, drawing, photography, film/video, sculpture, and site-specific works. Her singular interventions in the landscape embraced nature and disrupted societal conventions. Exiled from her homeland of Cuba where she was born in 1948, Ana Mendieta spent her childhood and formative years in Iowa, in the 1960s. She later studied art at the University of Iowa, first as a painter, then later in performative art, a move which would ultimately change her approach as an artist. Her body of work testifies to a passionate engagement with themes of exile and displacement, reconnecting with the earth, and the search for belonging and origin, through power, magic and the universal.

Creating a rich and diverse body of work that included ephemeral sculptures, Ana Mendieta, in her film and photographic works, captures time and process through direct actions which transport her beyond conventional materials to the realm of the intangible and impermanent, using nature as a collaborator. With her body as material, and driven by nature’s symbolic meaning, she sought to integrate power, magic and knowledge into her work, using natural materials as well as the four elements –earth, air, fire, and water. Feathers, flowers, branches, moss, fireworks and gunpowder were easily accessible and were often part of ritual practices to return her to the land and connect her to the universal. These obsessive acts of reasserting my ties with the earth is really a manifestation of my thirst for being. In essence my works are the reactivation of primeval beliefs. The photographs become the afterimage of primordial remembrances at work within the human psyche. – Ana Mendieta, Proposal for Rome Prize Fellowship, 1983

Using the earth as a sculptural medium – which she molded, impressed, and burned – Ana Mendieta conveyed notions of existence, resurgence and renewal through site-inclusive works that were exquisitely ethereal and transitory. Contemplative and existential meditations on mortality and the natural world, these works were part of living processes.

An interest in themes of transformation – birth, life, death, regeneration – is evident throughout her oeuvre, and can be seen in Ñañigo Burial, 1976, installed in the first floor gallery. Comprised of black candles which originally outlined the contours of the artist’s body, its title points to the influence of the Abakuá society of Cuba, also known as Ñañiguismo, which offers spiritual protection to its members. Drawn to this and Afro Cuban Santeria traditions, which blend the Yoruba religion of West Africa, Roman Catholicism, and Spiritism, Ana Mendieta sought magic and the divine to regenerate life within her work and through nature.

Ana Mendieta developed the Silueta Series from 1973-1980, first inspired by a visit to Mexico, in a signature period of expression in which she utilizes her own body, prior to removing herself from it. Moving away from traditional notions of sculpture as object, and towards the experience of living process and geological time as a medium, Ana Mendieta rendered silhouettes through hieroglyphs of imprints, outlines, and absences within the earth, which were left to erode and return to it.

Their timeless memory is preserved through related photographic works, such as Silueta Sangrienta, 1975, a new print. Other silueta works followed in 1976-79, such as Silueta Series (Tree of Life), 1978, and a selection which are presented here. A color print, Incantation to Olokun-Yemaya Encantación a Olokún-Yemayá (Incantation to Olokun-Yemaya), 1977, depicts a silueta in the earth, invoking two identities of the West African Yoruba goddess known as a river mother and fertility deity. A work from 1978 shows a spiral impression in the earth, creating a metaphorical association with land-based work- in this case with a human scale silueta at its center. In other works, figures are carved into the earth, such as in Black Venus, 1980, a black and white photograph which features an earthen imprint of a female form. Its title refers to a legendary symbol against slavery, an affirmation, as Ana Mendieta writes, of those who are free and refuse to be colonized. This work is in dialogue with La Venus Negra, 1981, which also features a detailed imprint resembling the human form, created on a rock surface — its deliberate placement on stone suggesting a connection between the human form, nature and the earth. Black and white photographs of two Sandwoman works from 1983 document outlines of organic female forms hand carved in the sand, reiterating temporality and impermanence. A newly framed and never before seen small-scale drawing of the hand with heart — imparts the artist’s fascination with ancient Egypt, hieroglyphs, and cave drawings, reiterating her journey “back to the source.” These works are accompanied by an additional selection of Untitled works on paper from 1978-79 and 1983-1985, depicting organic forms.

I have thrown myself into the very elements that produced me, using the earth as my canvas and my soul as my tools. - Ana Mendieta, Proposal for the New York State Council on the Arts, 17 March 1982

On view are ten films created between Iowa and Mexico which span from 1972 to 1978, and in which we see a representation of the various elements – from fire, water, and air, to gunpowder, and blood. The earliest of these, Chicken Movie, Chicken Piece, 1972, originally filmed in Super 8, documents a primitive action in which Ana Mendieta holds a decapitated chicken, a familiar form of sacrifice in Santería resulting in a splattering of blood, which thematically connects to universal and spiritual power. The theme of self-transformation is introduced in Blood + Feathers, captured in a recently discovered 1974 color photo in which Ana Mendieta initiates a transfer of energy, covering her body in feathers and blood, as if to divine herself as an unearthly avian spirit, becoming a bird or, as she had said, “the white cock.” Silueta del Laberinto (Laberinth Blood Imprint), 1974, shot the same year, begins with a silueta outline on a ceremonial site near Oaxaca, Mexico, the contours of which are flooded beyond their recessed lines, spilling beyond the corporeal outline to resemble an organic shape. In Silueta del Laberinto, one of the first films in which Ana Mendieta uses a silhouette to stand in for her own body, she also circumnavigates the site's labyrinthian architecture with a handheld camera, anticipating later works.

Energy Charge, a silent 16 mm film from 1975, evokes an avatar of Laberinth Blood Imprint, by featuring a figure with upraised arms emerging from a dark landscape which transforms into a bright red silueta shape before vanishing, the polarizing color recalling its memory. Two more films, each from the Silueta Series, are additionally sanguine in nature. Silueta Sangrienta, made in Iowa City in 1975, shows the artist naked and face up with uplifted arms in the excavated earth, which is later emptied, then re-filled with red pigmented liquid, in which she lies face down and partially submerged. Untitled: Silueta Series, 1978, filmed at Old Man’s Creek, Iowa, introduces the element of fire, showing hands created from clay emerging from a tree trunk which then becomes engulfed with rising flames. Silueta de Arena, 1978, depicts a silueta emerging from the shallow waters of a riverbank, forming an island unto itself.

On the second floor, the suite of color photographs, Body Tracks, 1974, traces an early action documented in Iowa prior to Mendieta’s move into nature. Here Ana Mendieta uses tempera to create imprints of her hands, repeated through a performative gesture of kneeling and dragging her red hands down to create markings in two parallel tracks on pink fabric.

In Grass Breathing, made in Iowa in 1975, Ana Mendieta becomes one with the earth, positioning herself beneath a mound of earthen sod in a meadow, inhaling and exhaling, the movement of her body causing the grassy verdant mound to rise and fall, then rest.

Upcoming solo exhibitions include a significant retrospective at the Tate Modern opening in July 2026 that will feature many important works, along with newly remastered films, early paintings, and late sculptural pieces, many of which will make their U.K. debut.

Ana Mendieta’s work has been exhibited in important solo exhibitions and museum retrospectives; exhibitions include those at MUSAC, León, Spain (2024); SESC Pompéia, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); Baltimore Museum Of Art, Baltimore, Maryland (2020); Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2019); Middleheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium (2019); Institute for Contemporary Art, Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (2018); Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany (2018); Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California (2016) The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel (2014); Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London, United Kingdom (2013); Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy (2013); Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (2011); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004); Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2004); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California (1998); Helsinki City Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland (1996); Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (1996); New Museum, New York, New York (1987).

Ana Mendieta received many prestigious awards in her lifetime, including a National Endowment for the Arts Grant (1977 and 1980) and Fellowship (1982); Creative Arts Program Services Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts (1979); John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1980); New York State Council on the Arts Grant (1982); Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome (1983); Award in the Visual Arts, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston-Salem, North Carolina (1984). A Visual Arts Lifetime Achievement Award was posthumously bestowed by The Cintas Foundation, New York in 2009.

A catalogue will be published on occasion of the exhibition and released in early 2026. Pre-orders will be available online and in the gallery.

MARIAN GOODMAN GALLERY

385 Broadway, New York, NY 10013 

www.mariangoodman.com

Ana Mendieta: Back to the Source 

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 7 November 2025 - 17 January 2026

Pop Brazil: Avant-garde and New Figuration, 1960-70 @ Pinacoteca de São Paulo - Brazilian Pop Art Exhibition

Pop Brazil: Avant-garde and New Figuration, 1960-70

Pinacoteca de São Paulo

Through October 5, 2025

Claudio Tozzi 

Astronautas [Astronauts] (1969)

Courtesy of the Pinacoteca de São Paulo

Pietrina Checcacci 

Dinheiro [Money] (detail), 

from the series O povo brasileiro [The Brazilian People] (1967) 

Credit: Jaime Aciolo 

Courtesy of the Pinacoteca de São Paulo

The Pinacoteca de São Paulo presents the exhibition Pop Brazil: Avant-garde and New Figuration, 1960-70, in the Grande Galeria of the Pina Contemporânea building. Featuring 250 works by more than 100 artists the show offers a broad perspective on the art of the period. Curated by Pollyana Quintella and Yuri Quevedo, the exhibition is divided into thematic sections that trace major events of the time, such as the rise of the cultural industry, the breakdown of democracy, and various social transformations. Works by Wanda Pimentel, Romanita Disconzi, Antonio Dias, among many others, are on view.

In a context of industrialization and political upheaval—including the Cold War and Brazil’s civil-military dictatorship—national artistic production responded to the mass culture, driven by television, mainstream media, and advertising, with both irreverence and resistance. From the 1960s onward, a series of international figurative trends entered national artistic debates. Among them was pop art, which originated in the United Kingdom but gained prominence in the United States through celebrated artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg. While these artists worked on language within a developed, industrialized society marked by mass production, Brazilian artists operated in a context of underdevelopment and inequality, where they had to reckon with the trauma of a society oppressed by military rule.

“The exhibition explores a moment in Brazilian history that still resonates in our daily lives. Looking at this production is key to understand the emergence of contemporary art in Brazil, as well as the foundational issues in many debates we face today. And, through the gathering of these works, we can grasp the collective strength of a generation of artists who worked to denounce, protest, and dream of a new society,” say the curators.

The artists’ interest in the street—driven by a desire to occupy more diverse and less institutionalized spaces—marked a series of events in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Among them was the Happening das Bandeiras [Flag Happening], held in 1968 at General Osório Square in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro. It brought together artists such as Nelson Leirner, Flávio Motta, Hélio Oiticica, Carmela Gross, and Anna Maria Maiolino. On that occasion, they displayed silkscreened flags in the square, promoting a collective occupation of public space, in pursuit of broader and more democratic access to the visual arts. The set of original flags opens the exhibition in the Grande Galeria.

Subsequent sections present works that reflect Brazil’s emerging cultural industry, showing stars of Brazilian popular music—whose fame grew thanks to television festivals—amid the fever of the space race, which turned astronauts into “pop icons” and broadcast to the world the historical milestone that was the humankind’s landing to the Moon. Prominent names from the period are showcased, like Nelson Leirner with his altar to the “king” Roberto Carlos, in the work Adoração [Adoration] (1966); Claudia Andujar, with a photograph of Chico Buarque taken in 1968; Flávio Império, who portrayed Caetano Veloso in Lua de São Jorge (1976); the popular artist Waldomiro de Deus, with his characteristic rockets; and Claudio Tozzi, with works such as Bob Dylan (1969) and Guevara (1967), in addition to his astronauts that helped define the iconography of Brazilian pop art. 

The restrictions imposed by the civil-military dictatorship were reflected in artistic production through diverse formal, poetic, and political strategies. The exhibition includes caricatures of generals, featured in the works by Humberto Espíndola, Antonio Dias, and Cybele Varela; political prisoners’ drawings from the Alípio Freire Collection, belonging to the Memorial da Resistência; photographic records that Evandro Teixeira made in the emblematic March of the One Hundred Thousand, as well as works that sought to intervene directly in the political context, such as the CocaCola bottles by Cildo Meireles, which make up the work Inserções em circuitos ideológicos [Insertions into Ideological Circuits] (1970), and the Trouxas ensanguentadas [Bloody Bundles] (1969) by Artur Barrio. The theme of crime also permeated the art of the period. Faced with the oppressive state, figures of marginality were evoked as a subversive strategy, challenging morality and laws. Among them, we highlight a crime scene painted by Paulo Pedro Leal in the early 1960s, the film Natureza [Nature] (1973), by Luiz Alphonsus, and the classic work A bela Lindonéia [The Beautiful Lindonéia] (1967), by Rubens Gerchman.

Pop gestures also appropriated the urban imagery through visual codes and signage. This is the case of works such as Marlboro (1976), in which Geraldo de Barros transforms billboard scraps into paintings, and the structured surfaces with acrylic and brass remains by Judith Lauand (Untitled, 1972). In the central area of the gallery, works express the dispute for public space. Arrows, traffic lights, festivities, and collective projects gain centrality in the works. Buum (1966), by Marcello Nitsche, Totém de interpretação [Interpretation Totem] (1969), by Romanita Disconzi, Lateral de ônibus [Side of Bus] (1969), by Raymundo Colares, and the iconic parangolés by Hélio Oiticica, first shown 60 years ago in the Opinião 65 exhibition, held at MAM Rio, can be seen by the public. In the case of Hélio Oiticica, the visitor can literally try on the parangolés, wearing them in the exhibition space. 

The 1960s also served as a stage for a sexual revolution, sparked by historical events such as May 68 in France and the hippie movement in the United States. At the core of the section dedicated to desire and sexuality are works by artists who reflected on the shifting status of sexuality in Brazil, also influenced by mass culture. This is the case of Wanda Pimentel, with her Envolvimento [Involvement] series (1968), Teresinha Soares with A caixa de fazer amor [Lovemaking Box] (1967), and Antonio Dias in Teu corpo [Your Body] (1967), as well as pieces by Maria Auxiliadora, Lygia Pape, and Vilma Pasqualini.

Curators: Pollyana Quintella and Yuri Quevedo

PINACOTECA DE SÃO PAULO

Pina Contemporânea Building | Grande Galeria

Av. Tiradentes, 273, São Paulo 

pinacoteca.org.br

Pop Brazil: Avant-garde and New Figuration, 1960-70

Pinacoteca de São Paulo, May 31 – October 5, 2025

Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection @ Museum of the City of New York

Above Ground 

Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection

Museum of the City of New York 

November 22, 2024 – August 10, 2025

“There are people who see the graffiti experience as a vocation of adolescence, rites of passage without a sense of direction... But I saw it early on as a catalyst to develop as a painter and explore the other horizons outside of a 40-foot subway car.” – Lee Quiñones

The Museum of the City of New York presents Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection, an extraordinary exhibition tracing the evolution of graffiti art from its roots on the streets of New York City in the early 1970s to recognition and celebration in galleries and museums worldwide. 

Above Ground showcases work drawn from the Museum's substantial graffiti art collection, complemented by loans from private collections. It highlights the transition many graffiti artists made from tagging subway cars to creating paintings on canvas, marking a pivotal moment in the movement's evolution as it entered broader public awareness and significantly influenced global culture. 

The exhibition highlights many never seen donated 30 years ago by the visionary artist and collector Martin Wong – including works in aerosol, ink, and other mediums by key figures such as Keith Haring, Futura 2000, Fab 5 Freddy, Rammellzee, Lee Quiñones, Haze, Crash, Lady Pink, and Tracy 168.

“Above Ground celebrates the 30th anniversary of Martin Wong’s donation to the museum and the 10th anniversary of MCNY’s initial City as Canvas exhibition,” says Sean Corcoran, Senior Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York. “This show offers a renewed and expanded look at graffiti’s journey from NYC streets to the most prestigious galleries around the world.”

The exhibition is organized into several sections, highlighting the origins of graffiti and its broader cultural impact, particularly the Post-Graffiti movement. The exhibition touches on the East Village scene, and the impact of early indie galleries such as Fun Gallery, Fashion Moda, and others that showcased graffiti on canvas. It considers the art form’s initial international success and underscores the legacy of Martin Wong and his commitment to preserving the art form.

Select exhibition highlights include:

• Martha Cooper’s photographs of work by Keith Haring and more;

• Lee Quiñones’ monumental painting, A Life Takes a Life (1983);

• TRACY 168 from ESSY Studio sketch pad (1980);

• Rammellzee’s Atomic Note (1986) and Atomic Futurism (1987);

• A-One’s spray paint on canvas work, Beauty of a Beast (In Memory of Bear 167) (1987);

• Photographs from Henry Chalfant’s Subway Art series, including Skeme and Daze and Kel Crash;

• DAZE spray paint on canvas pieces, Phobia (1983) and French Dream. Life Below Aerosol (1984);

• Several pieces from KAWS’ collection, including DONDI’s Bishop of Battle (1985); and Martin Wong’s Sharp and Dottie (1984);

• A documentary by Charlie Ahearn on Martin Wong’s collection, offers a deeper understanding of the art and its historical context.

Stephanie Hill Wilchfort, Ronay Menschel Director and President of the Museum of the City of New York, adds, “Born in New York City, graffiti is now a global phenomenon This exhibition not only celebrates the artistic contributions of graffiti artists, reflects the dynamic and everevolving culture of our city, and explores how New York’s art and popular culture influences the world.”

MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

www.mcny.org

Color Field Queens: Female Artists of the 1970s @ Lincoln Glenn Gallery, New York

Color Field Queens: Female Artists of the 1970s

Lincoln Glenn Gallery, New York

August 3 – September 21, 2024

Lincoln Glenn Gallery presents Color Field Queens, an exhibition of works by Alice Baber, Beryl Barr-Sharrar, Sherron Francis, Dorothy Fratt, Sheila Isham, Emily Mason, Betty Parsons, Vivian Springford, Hilda Shapiro Thorpe, and Takako Yamaguchi. The ten artists in the presentation are united not only by gender, but also by their significant and underappreciated contributions to the Color Field movement in the 1970s.

The term Color Field Painting was coined by American critic Clement Greenberg on the occasion of a 1964 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In considering the selection of works from the 1970s presented in Color Field Queens in the terms of Greenberg’s definition of Color Field painting, key techniques and attributes unify these artists under Greenberg’s movement. In many of the works, paint is thinned into delicate washes and blooming swaths of color. The resultant forms deliver sumptuous tones, uninterrupted by brush strokes that would suggest the presence of the hand behind them.

The Color Field movement had robust roots in both Washington D.C. and New York City in the decade leading up to Greenberg’s defining exhibition. In 1957, Sheila Isham (1927–2024) established a studio practice in D.C. and joined a group known as the Society of Washington Printmakers. In the same period, D.C. native Dorothy Fratt (1923–2017) began showing as a student in D.C. at the Corcoran School of Art and the Phillips Collection, ultimately joining the group that would become the Washington Color School.

Color Field painting became formally linked to Washington D.C with the 1965 exhibition Washington Color Painters at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, featuring work by Gene Davis, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland, among others. The exhibition solidified the formation of the Washington Color School, uniting a “second generation” of artists in the movement who showed at the Washington Gallery as well as the Jefferson Place Gallery, co-founded by Kenneth Noland. Hilda Shapiro Thorpe (1920–2000) exhibited regularly in this cohort alongside the highest-profile woman tied to the movement, Alma Thomas. 

“A good part of the reaction against Abstract Expressionism is, as I've already suggested, a continuation of it,” wrote Clement Greenberg; as such, in addition to D.C., the Color Field movement had a robust presence in the birthplace of Abstract Expressionism, New York City. During this key period of growth for the Color Field movement, Vivian Springford (1913–2003) remained an active member of the local artist community, shifting from showing at the Great Jones Gallery, the Preston Gallery, and the Visual Arts Coalition.

Around this same time in the 1960s, Beryl Barr-Sharrar (b. 1935) was living and working in Paris, where she encountered notable American artists working in a similar visual language, including Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, and Alice Baber (1928–1982). Alice Baber spent ample time in Paris as well as in New York, where she co-founded March Gallery, one of the select 10th Street galleries. New York-born Emily Mason (1932–2019), another member of the grouping, ran in these same circles, showing at the artist-run Area Gallery.

It is on the heels of this highly generative period of Abstraction in New York that Sherron Francis (b. 1940) moved to Soho in 1968. Joining a community of artists that included Larry Poons, Larry Zox, and Peter Bradley, Sherron Francis began showing with Andre Emmerich upon being introduced to the renowned gallerist by fellow artist Dan Christensen in 1971. In 1973, Andre Emmerich Gallery held solo shows of work by Sherron Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, and Washington Color School painter Kenneth Noland. Legendary art dealer Betty Parsons (1900–1982), whose famed gallery was located on East 57th Street, was also producing colorful found wood assemblages during the 1970s. The youngest artist of this group show, Takako Yamaguchi (b. 1952), was strongly associated with the Pattern and Decoration Movement (P&D), which found its roots in the mid-1970s.

Color Field Queens reflects Lincoln Glenn Gallery’s core mission to showcase the wide array of American artists who made significant contributions to art history but faced institutional barriers that allowed their names to be forgotten by time.

LINCOLN GLENN GALLERY

542 West 24th Street, New York, NY

www.lincolnglenn.com

The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984 at Grey Art Gallery & Fales Library, NYU

The Downtown Show: 

The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984

Grey Art Gallery & Fales Library, NYU

January 10 - April 1, 2006

Downtown New York has been an epicenter of creative ferment for more than 150 years. One decade, from 1974 to 1984, is the subject of a landmark exhibition premiering at two New York University institutions: the Grey Art Gallery, NYU’s fine arts museum, and Fales Library, the repository of its special collections. The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984 is the first retrospective to chart the rich cross-section of artists and activities that coexisted and often overlapped during this heady time in Lower Manhattan, and will be on view at both locations. Featuring approximately 375 paintings, sculptures, drawings, videos, and photographs as well as over 70 items from the Downtown Collection of Fales—the world’s most extensive archive of books, journals, posters, and ephemera relating to the Downtown scene from 1970 to the present—the show views Downtown as both geography and metaphor, and illuminates how this 10-year period radically altered the face of American art and culture.

Some 25 years later, the exhibition and its accompanying publication, The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984 (Princeton University Press), untangle the knot of multiple narratives that became intertwined during Downtown’s heyday. What distinguishes The Downtown Show from earlier exhibitions is its focus on a broad section of Lower Manhattan’s artistic community, beginning with the enactment of the “Loft Law,” which made it legal for artists to live in SoHo’s sprawling industrial spaces, and concluding with the rise of the East Village’s narrow, storefront galleries and Ronald Reagan’s re-election. Emerging out of the deflated optimism of the Summer of Love, New York’s Downtown scene attracted artists, musicians, performers, filmmakers, writers, and others who could afford the then-low rents of SoHo lofts and Lower East Side tenements. In a rapidly evolving Downtown landscape, they ferociously churned out work that was populist and subversive, utopian and raw, antic and angry.

“The vernacular of Downtown was a disjunctive language of profound ambivalence, broken narratives, subversive signs, ironic inversions, proliferate amusements, criminal interventions, material surrogates, improvised impersonations, and immersive experientiality,” observes Carlo McCormick, The Downtown Show’s guest curator and a well-known critic. 

Marvin Taylor, editor of The Downtown Book and director of Fales Library, adds: “Downtown artists adopted an anarchic attitude that violated the gap between high art and mass culture, removed the production and reception of avant-garde art from its isolation within elite circles, and directly addressed social and political concerns. They also 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.”

In keeping with the experimental spirit of Downtown’s interdisciplinary practices, Carlo McCormick has organized the work of approximately 175 artists, writers, performers, and musicians into eight themes. Installed salon style, this provocative framing invokes the invigorating dissonance of the Downtown scene. The eight sections comprise: 

1) Interventions—a preface and introduction that posits a connection between the proliferation of not-for-profit exhibition venues and artworks engaging Downtown urban settings and architecture; 

2) Broken Stories—a fresh look at the innovative narrative techniques developed during the decade not only by writers, but also filmmakers and visual artists; 

3) De-Signs—an investigation of the artistic use of advertising’s shorthand signs and strategies, which in turn set the stage for more theoretical works grounded in postmodern theory; 

4) Salon de Refuse—a section that brings together works that harnessed the surrounding detritus to create a “trash culture” of their own that challenged traditional hierarchical distinctions; 

5) Body Politics—a presentation of art concerned with sexuality and identity politics; 

6) Sublime Time—an exploration focusing on the period’s search for the sublime in the wake of minimalism’s reductive and formal concept of beauty; 

7) The Portrait Gallery—a space featuring photographic, sculptural, and painted images of key Downtown denizens, which creates a vibrant “portrait” of this dynamic community; and, in conclusion, 

8) The Mock Shop—a recreation of the stores—featuring low-cost artists’ multiples and other artworks—that critiqued consumer culture in many Downtown shows and other collaboratives.

The Downtown Show intentionally presents a mélange of generations: works by Vito Acconci, Joan Jonas, Leon Golub, Carolee Schneemann, and Lawrence Weiner will be displayed alongside pieces by Karen Finley, Robert Longo, Christian Marclay, Cindy Sherman, and Laurie Simmons. Leading off the “Interventions” section, for example, is Gordon Matta-Clark’s Days End, which depicts the artist’s slicing of Pier 52 in 1975. This sets the stage for pieces by David Wojnarowicz and other artists who likewise took their art to the streets, drawing inspiration from Downtown New York’s desolate industrial landscape. Ida Applebroog’s multi-paneled narratives herald the resurgence of figuration out of the austerity of minimalism in “Broken Stories.” Also presented in this section are books by Downtown denizens such as Spalding Grey and Lynne Tillman (featuring illustrations by Kiki Smith) along with manuscripts by Kathy Acker and Eric Bogosian. In “Sublime Time,” documentation of Tehching Hsieh’s One Year Performance, 1980–81, which demonstrates an interest in expanded notions of temporality will be installed alongside abstract paintings by Ron Gorchov and Peter Halley. “Sublime Time” not only encompasses mesmeric or meditative artworks and compositions, but also conjures the atmosphere of the late-night club scene and even New York City itself, where time—even without the mind-altering drugs then so prevalent—often seemed to either slow down inexorably or speed by in a blinding flash. Fales Library and Special Collections—housed in NYU’s Bobst Library down the street from the Grey Art Gallery—will feature the “De-Signs” and “Body Politics” sections. In the former, selections from Jenny Holzer’s The Living Series, 1980–82, enameled signs proclaiming terse statements, will hang along side the stencils John Fekner employed in spray-painting proclamations on the city’s brick walls and concrete overpasses. “De-Signs” references graffiti and introduces the Punk music scene. Similarly, “Body Politics” includes Lynda Benglis’s infamous 1974 Artforum ad, performance documentation of Ethyl Eichelberger, and Nan Goldin’s color photographs. Also featured will be a selection of musical extracts from SoHo’s Loft Jazz era, Techno, and Punk Rock.

Interspersed throughout is a rich array of Fales Library’s archival material—artists’ journals as well as exhibition announcements, posters, and other ephemera—which together represent not only a significant body of the period’s material culture but also vivid reminders of its personal histories. As Marvin Taylor makes clear, “In order to restore the vitality of this period, we must attempt to put the human elements, the individual experiences, motives, and aspirations—the agency if you will—back into the cultural memory.” In the words of Carlo McCormick, “The Downtown scene is all about collision—don’t follow the footsteps. Instead, track the skidmarks.”

The Downtown Book

The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984 provides the first comprehensive overview of this important period. Although there is no shortage of commentary on the Downtown scene—including its already mythic subculture of Punk—few accounts rise above hagiography. Published by Princeton University Press, The Downtown Book probes the trends that arose in the 1970s and early ’80s and solidified New York’s reputation as arbiter of the postmodern American avant-garde. Its seven essays are intercut with twelve personal reminiscences from pioneers, practitioners, and provocateurs of the scene. Providing a lively survey of the media, trends, and culture of the Downtown scene, The Downtown Book offers an illuminating counterpart to the exhibition and makes a substantial contribution to the greater understanding of late 20th-century culture.

Exhibition Tour

After closing in New York, The Downtown Show travels to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from May 20 to September 3, 2006, and the Austin Museum of Art, in Austin, Texas, from November 18, 2006, to January 28, 2007.

GREY ART GALLERY

100 Washington Square East, New York, NY 10003

www.nyu.edu/greyart

FALES LIBRARY

Elmer Holmes Bobst Library

70 Washington Square South, 3rd Floor

www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/fales