Photographer Marcia Resnick was part of a group of young artists who exhibited works at the Fine Arts Building that dealt with their own lives and real-world concerns. Resnick’s 1975 self-portrait shows her with two of the curators who organized exhibitions in the building: Susan Penzner (left), curator of Self Portraits, and Jeffrey Deitch (right), curator of Lives.
Today TriBeCa is one of New York’s most affluent neighborhoods, but back in the early 1970s it was a desolate, largely abandoned manufacturing district. In fact, much of the neighborhood’s rise can be attributed to the decision by the owner of 105 Hudson Street to partner with art impresario Julian Pretto and rent space inexpensively to artists. The previously nearly empty Fine Arts Building quickly filled its nine floors with exhibition spaces and inexpensive live-in studios. The energy of the youthful scene was contagious, and soon Tribeca was alive with other galleries, bars and restaurants, all laying the groundwork for the upscale boom that followed.
There is more to the story of 105 Hudson, however, than its role in the gentrification of TriBeCa. For a brief period in the mid-70s it was the key venue where one could experience the radical changes that influenced the development of art in the late 1970s and 80s. Three exhibitions organized by the young curators Edit deAk, Susan Penzner and Jeffrey Deitch in fall 1975, focused on performance, photography and text in ways that created a new form of conceptual art that abandoned formalism for an art based on personal experience and engagement with the world.
Over the next few years, The Fine Arts Building attracted other art tenants of note. Printed Matter, a newly created organization that published and promoted artists’ books moved into the building for a short period in 1977. That same year Marcia Tucker created The New Museum in a small Fine Arts Building office. The alternative gallery Artists Space also moved into the building in 1977, taking over most of the second floor. Pictures, one of their first exhibitions, featured a new form of politicized appropriation that was later grouped under the title Pictures Generation. In 1978 an Artists Space concert featuring experimental bands helped introduce the concept of No Wave, a movement in music and art that emphasized pure creativity and the abandonment of conventional rules.
But by the end of the 1970s, the Fine Arts Building and others in the neighborhood started selling and renting spaces at greatly increased prices that forced artists to move. Many migrated to the Lower East Side which replaced TriBeCa as the center for new art in the 1980s.
You can read more about The Fine Arts Building at Gallery 98’s related site 98 Bowery, 1969-89: View from The Top Floor.
The Fine Arts Building, Promotional Card, c. 1970s. Size: 4.5 x 6 inches. — Available
In 1974 the art dealer and entrepreneur Julian Pretto convinced the owner of 105 Hudson Street to let him revive the largely empty building by mounting exhibitions, and offering short-term leases at low rents to artists and art-related offices. The Fine Arts Building was named by Pretto.
Not Photography / Photography, November 1 – 11, 1975
Not Photography, Group Show curated by Edit deAk, Fine Arts Building, Card, 1975. Size: 4.25 x 5.5 inches. — Available
Not Photography / Photography included Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Laurie Anderson, Robert Smithson, Christo, Diego Cortez, Hannah Wilke, Alan Vega, Marc H. Miller, Jack Smith, Alan Sekula, Stefan Eins and others. It was curated by art writer Edit deAk, a co-founder of Art-Rite magazine, and an assistant at Artists Space. The exhibition highlighted how artists were using photography not only as a medium onto itself but as a practical tool related to broader art concerns.
Self Portraits, November 15 – 25, 1975
Announcement for “Self-Portraits,” Group Show curated by Susan Penzner, Fine Arts Building, Card with Reflective Metallic Foil Paper, 1975. Size: 4.5 x 6.5 inches.
Self-Portraits was curated by Susan Penzner who ran a gallery out of her uptown apartment, sold advertisement for Artforum, and was a hostess at the popular art hangout One Fifth Avenue. The exhibition showed how artists were increasingly interested in displaying their own lives, and included Laurie Anderson, Mary Beth Edelson, Colette, James Collins, Joan Jonas, Nam June Paik, Sigmar Polke, Marcia Resnick, Gerhard Richter, Alan Sonfist, William Wegman, and others.
Lives, November 29 – December 20, 1975
Lives was the first independent curatorial venture of Jeffrey Deitch, a 23-year old assistant at the John Weber Gallery, who in later years became a major player in the art world. The exhibition’s subtitle was Artists Who Deal with Peoples’ Lives (Including Their Own) As the Subject and/or the Medium of Their Work. Among those featured were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Gilbert & George, On Kawara, Marc H. Miller, Adrian Piper, Marcia Resnick, Alan Sonfist, and Hannah Wilke.
Jeffrey Deitch, Lives: Artists Who Deal With Peoples’ Lives (Including Their Own) As The Subject And/Or The Medium Of Their Work, Fine Arts Building, 48-Page Catalogue, 1975. Size: 8.5 x 11 inches.
Lives was the only one of the three exhibitions that had a catalogue. Each of the catalogue’s pages was designed by the featured artist, with the pages xeroxed and stapled together.
List of artists who were in the exhibition Lives and contributed xerox pages for the catalogue.
Xerox pages from the Lives catalogue, 1975. Left to right: Laurie Anderson, Eleanor Antin, Colette, William Wegman, Ray Johnson, Hannah Wilke. View the complete Lives catalogue.
Artists Space, 105 Hudson Street, 1977 – 1984
In 1977 the alternative gallery Artists’ Space moved into the Fine Arts Building. It was here that the now famous Pictures exhibition was mounted, and it was also the venue for the No Wave rock concert that led to the No New York record album produced by Brian Eno. In 1980, Artists Space’s director Helene Winer left to start the gallery Metro Pictures. Artists Space remained in the Fine Arts Building until 1984. It is still active today.
Pictures, Group Show, Artists Space, Card, 1977. Card size: 3.5 x 5.5 inches. — Available
The Pictures exhibition curated by Douglas Crimp featured Tony Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Philip Smith. It served as the basis for the Metropolitan Museum’s 2009 exhibition The Pictures Generation, 1974 – 1984.
Pictures, Group Show, Artists Space, 30-page Catalogue, 1977. Size: 6 x 9 inches. — Available
Bands at Artists Space, Flyer, 1978.
Bands at Artist Space was attended by Brian Eno who later that year produced the album No New York, which featured the same groups.
