The primary takeaway of Brand New at the Hirshhorn is its demonstration of how high the stakes of representation became during the 1980s, a decade of proliferating imagery and technology.
Art in the 1980s
Artist Anton van Dalen on the East Village, Saul Steinberg, and Pigeon Keeping
Next time you’re walking through the East Village, take a moment to look up at the skies over Tompkins Square Park. You might just spot Anton van Dalen’s flock of snow-white pigeons. The artist, who first learned to rear the birds at the age of twelve, is one of the few remaining pigeon keepers in Lower Manhattan.
Christy Rupp on Rats, Geese, and the Ecology of Public Art
Christy Rupp burst onto the New York art scene with “Rat Patrol,” a street art response to the sanitation strike of 1979.
The East Village Eye: Where Art, Hip Hop, and Punk Collided
Between May 1979 and January 1987, the East Village Eye breathlessly covered the East Village art scene. Indiscriminate in its interests, the magazine charted the rise of hip hop, graffiti, and punk, and is widely credited with contributing to the intermingling of several New York scenes.
Mimi Smith’s Battle with Chase Manhattan Bank
Censored, blown up by terrorists, and the subject of a four-year legal battle with Chase Manhattan Bank, Mimi Smith’s 1982 installation “October 1, 1981,” an artwork inspired by television news, was briefly the subject of the news itself.
Highlights From the PAD/D Archive
A look at the contents of the large PAD/D Archive at MoMA QNS.
Art in the 1980s: The Forgotten History of PAD/D
July 1979. Margaret Thatcher is the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Iran has entered its fourth month as an Islamic Republic, and the Sandinista National Liberation Front have deposed the U.S. backed Samoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. It was against this political backdrop that Lucy Lippard’s exhibition, Some British Art From the Left (June 16 – July 14,1979) finished its run at Artists Space in New York City.