East Village Eye, 1979–1987

Leonard Abrams was just 24 years old when he started the East Village Eye in early 1979. Filling a void left after the closing of the East Village Other seven years before, and riding the wave of a newly revived East Village kick-started by CBGB and the rise of Punk, the Eye grew quickly and published regularly from May 1979 through January 1987. Ultimately, the somewhat erratic monthly was to produce 72 issues. Early issues had print runs of 5,000; later issues in the mid teens.

Abrams defined the Eye as a “community in print” incorporating news, nightclubs, art, film, music, and fashion. There was no pay but plenty of high profile contributors like Richard Hell, Cookie Mueller, Glenn O’Brien, Futura 2000, David Wojnarowicz, and Danceteria owner Rudolf. The paper can now be prized for historic art coverage that helped fuel the highly publicized rise of East Village artists and galleries in the early-1980s. The Eye’s first art director was Christof Kohlhofer, a member of the downtown artist group Collaborative Projects, Inc. (Colab). The Eye chronicled Colab projects like the Times Square Show and the gallery ABC No Rio, and featured pullout centerfolds by Colab artists. During the early-to mid-1980s, the Eye’s art editors were Walter Robinson and Carlo McCormick, authors of the seminal Art in America article that first defined East Village art. Features editor Steven Hager, later the author of the first books on hip-hop and nightclub art, kept the Eye on top of developments in graffiti and rap music. Eye covers spotlighted Robert Mapplethorpe, Sue Coe, Richard Hambleton, Mike Bidlo, and many other visual artists.

Gallery 98 has obtained a nearly complete set of the East Village Eye that we are now making available individually. Discounts are available for purchases of 3 or more items.

Tom Warren, “Leonard Abrams” (from the Colab Artist Series) — Leonard Abrams publisher of the East Village Eye, 1981. Photograph by Tom Warren.

From the Collection

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Mary Boone Gallery:A History in Art Ephemera

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Mary Boone’s decision to close her galleries as she gets ready to begin serving a 30-month jail sentence for tax evasion, brings to a halt the storied reign of one of New York’s most public and successful dealers.
Texas Gallery

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Thanks in part to our new high-visibility website, Gallery 98 is increasingly being approached by artists and galleries who want their history to be part of our ever-expanding collection of art ephemera. Recently, we were fortunate to obtain a large collection of announcement cards from the Texas Gallery, courtesy of its principal owner…
Fine Arts Photography, Ephemera From Light Gallery, 1971–1987

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The rise of photography as an art collectible has largely taken place over the last fifty years and much credit can be given to Light Gallery (1971–87), the first gallery to exclusively represent “artist photographers.”…
Deitch Projects (1996 – 2010)

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In the course of fourteen years in New York’s Soho arts’ district, Deitch Projects completely reconfigured people’s expectations about art. Its founder Jeffrey Deitch was already a well-known art advisor, curator and critic when in 1996 he decided to open his own gallery, where he remained committed to the populist…
Andrew Castrucci & Bullet Space: A Lower East Side Art Squat, 1980s & ’90s

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In the mid-1980s, as gentrification encroached on the East Village, the neighborhood’s eastern fringe remained a lawless landscape of abandoned buildings and rubble-strewn lots.
IGTimes: Urban Street Culture, 1984–1994

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Among the underground publications of the 1970s and 80s IGTimes has the distinction of being the first periodical devoted to New York street and subway art.
Anton Perich: Electric Brushstrokes, 1978–1989

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A childhood tinkerer and an aspiring inventor, Perich achieved success in 1977 by creating a machine that automatically produced a sequence of lines with an airbrush activated by a photocell reacting to the lights and darks of projected images.
John Gibson Gallery: The Early Years

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The rise of Fluxus and Conceptual Art in the 1960s opened up many new possibilities for artists. The John Gibson Gallery, established in 1967, quickly made a reputation for itself by exhibiting some of the most challenging examples of these new developments.
40 Top Art Events of the Downtown Era: A Timeline, 1974–1992

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The Downtown Era began in the 1970s, when aspiring artists of the baby-boomer generation arrived in New York. Over the next two decades, they would radically change the art world, opening it up to new forms of media, new modes of exhibiting art, and new social perspectives.
A Survey of Jean-Michel Basquiat Ephemera: 1981–88

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Similar to the way paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat have played a key role in the frenzy surrounding contemporary high-end art auctions, the same is happening in the more limited market of vintage contemporary art ephemera. The cards, posters and publications that feature Basquiat and chart the important moments in his…
Roger Lannes de Montebello (1908–1986): A 40-Year Quest for 3-D Photography

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Although Philippe de Montebello, the former Metropolitan Museum director is well-known, few people have heard about his father Roger de Montebello and his life-long creative obsession with three-dimensional photography.
Talk is Cheap: A Street Poster Exhibition, 1984

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In the 1970s and 80s much of downtown New York lay in decay but amidst the economic squalor a surprising art renaissance emerged along the district’s streets and walls. Most people remember the graffiti from that period but of equal interest was the profusion of street posters. This was the…

East Village Eye, 1979–1987

From the Collection

Mary Boone Gallery:A History in Art Ephemera

Texas Gallery

Fine Arts Photography, Ephemera From Light Gallery, 1971–1987

Deitch Projects (1996 – 2010)

Andrew Castrucci & Bullet Space: A Lower East Side Art Squat, 1980s & ’90s

IGTimes: Urban Street Culture, 1984–1994

Anton Perich: Electric Brushstrokes, 1978–1989

John Gibson Gallery: The Early Years

40 Top Art Events of the Downtown Era: A Timeline, 1974–1992

A Survey of Jean-Michel Basquiat Ephemera: 1981–88

Roger Lannes de Montebello (1908–1986): A 40-Year Quest for 3-D Photography

Talk is Cheap: A Street Poster Exhibition, 1984