Customer Reviews

The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I agree with the previous reviewer: why no Basquiat? Yet that brings me to my major issue with the book, which is the uneven quality of the included essays. Berbard Gendron's essay on downtown music and Matthew Yokobosky's essay on no wave cinema are useful and interesting, yet the reader is punished with Robert Siegle's vague essay on downtown writing, an absurd essay about modernism vs postmodernism, and an absolutely awful essay by Carlo McCormick. Here's a sentence by McCormick:

"Between the communality of the great psychedelic orgy and the mortal dread of viral transmission, the concupiscence of youth proliferated a polymorphous perversity that explored the politics of desire, the social ideals of attraction, and the aesthetics of fetish in a carnal celebration of ideogrammatic Sexpressionism."

Someone get him a copy of _The Elements of Style_.

In any case, the book is filled with some really interesting photos and reproductions, so I'd say it's worth a look. I just wouldn't pay full price.

This book indeed contains a good cross-section of the artists, writers & performers navigating around the downtown NY art scene between 74 & 84. Great photographs & an excellent Chronology feature at the end of the book. BUT: How do you get by sub-titling a book The New York Art Scene 1974-1984 without showing one photo of or one piece of work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, or writing one full paragraph concerning him? There are only scattered mentions of him here & there & the only photo we get are a couple of stills from Downtown 81. It's true that I didn't buy this book expecting in-depth Basquiat coverage, but still, there could have been at least a bit more on him. I'm only knocking off one rating star for that since besides the lack of Basquiat pictures, this book is an excellent summary/chronology of an increasingly important & often overlooked period of American art.