Author: Simpson, Charles R.

Publication Year: 1980

Media Type: Book

Summary:

The South Houston district of Lower Manhattan, formerly an obsolete factory and commercial area, is today the home of America's foremost community of visual artists. It is a vital, dynamic place, the center of New York's multimillion-dollar trade in contemporary art. This book looks at the emergence of the SoHo community and explores the cultural social, social, and economic processes that shapes and sustain it.

Abstract:

The South Houston district of Lower Manhattan, formerly an obsolete factory and commercial area, is today the home of America's foremost community of visual artists. It is a vital, dynamic place, the center of New York's multimillion-dollar trade in contemporary art. This book looks at the emergence of the SoHo community and explores the cultural social, social, and economic processes that shapes and sustain it. SoHo's development began in the 1950s with the precarious and illegal residence of artists in manufacturing lofts.

As more artists moved in, more buildings were converted to studio and residential use. By the late 1960s, the community was able to mount a politically sophisticated resistance to highway builders and real estate developers who sought to demolish the area's buildings, and unique zoning protections were won for the artist community. Charles Simpson considers the artists' success in preserving their physical setting - an architecturally significant district of cast-iron buildings - and their overall place in the cultural life of the city to be an example of decentralized, resident-initiated urban planning at its best. As a legal and administrative entity, culturally integrated within the city as a whole but responsible to the city through a politicized planning process, SoHo prefigures a new basis for urban organization.

But the SoHo community is more than the politics of land use relating to its territory. It is a complex, ongoing social process. Simpson examines the patterns in family life, child care and education, and community leadership that developed to meet the distinctive needs of SoHo residents. He treats the social psychology of the artist's occupation, both for those who make it and for those who do not, and relates this psychology to the cultural contradictions of the wider society. Simpson shows that the art dealer plays a pivotal role as cultural entrepreneur, structuring the market by which artists live and initiating the aesthetic consensus regarding artistic value. The rapidity with which styles change and the unpredictability of success make a personal support network essential to the SoHo artist and a basis for community social activity. (jacket)

CONTENTS
Illustrations.
Acknowledgments.

  1. Introduction: Art and Cultural renovation.
  2. The structure of the SoHo art market.
  3. The dealer: Gatekeeper to the art world.
  4. The unsuccessful SoHo artist: The psychology of an occupation.
  5. The successful artist in the SoHo market.
  6. The integration of the status community.
  7. The South Houston industrial district in transition.
  8. SoHo and the politics of urban planning.
  9. The achievement of territorial community.
10. Family life in SoHo.
11. The evolution of SoHo as a real-estate market.

Appendix:
     1. Methods.
     2. Tables.
Notes [bibliography].
Index.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Artists-Resources for