Raucous, Disorderly Downtown
Richard Hell writes: ‘Following the mid-twentieth-century triumph of New York’s Jackson Pollock, Willem deKooning, Mark Rothko, and their cohort of Abstract Expressionists and Color Field painters, what could the next generation of American artists do? New York had become the new capital of art after a hundred years of Parisian dominance: Could we sustain? “Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965,†an exhibition at NYU’s Grey Gallery (through April 1), captures the fertile tumult of this period.’ Pictured is John Cohen’s photograph of Red Grooms transporting artwork to Reuben Gallery (detail), New York City, 1960.
