There was a time in New York when and where streets were probably as dirty as they are now, but the homelessness, poverty, urban decay and crime were far greater than they will ever be. The city’s fiscal crisis and loss of federal monies, the general distrust of a suburban nation towards the cities and a worlwide recession, all seemed to merge, shaping a broken city that bordered ruin and self-destruction, yet (most likely for this reason) was more alive and exciting than ever (survivors say).
Reading about Gordon Matta-Clark’s life and projects in Seventies Manhattan, when and where everything seemed possible among the dilapidation and lack of money but abundance of creativity and neighborhood/artist activity.
Attending the launch of Robert Smithson’s 1970’s project “Floating Island” and hearing Nancy Holt talk about their loft on Greenwich Street overlooking the Hudson. Times gone where and when art was art, not money and pose; living was cheap and what mattered was art and ideas, not looks, social connections and fake attitude dressed in Prada.
SoHo was an abandoned quarter where a young starving artist could virtually occupy a story on a warehouse and go unnoticed, able nevertheless to create and show art. Chelsea, the West Village and the Meatpacking District, or NoHo, Nolita and all the newly-invented, ultra-chic and hyper-expensive quarters of Manhattan had an authentic grittiness that would put Chelsea’s current version of urban shabbiness (that mixture of garages and art galleries) to shame.
All those places are now taken over by soulless hipsters, Marc Jacobs stores, boutique hotels, miniature dogs, models and $2000 bags. Rampant crime, abandonment and prostitution are substituted by fashion victims, overdevelopment and more whores, this time clean-looking.
Conceptual art and artists’ communities have yielded its way to trillion-dollar Warhols and bubbling young artists anxious to show their crafty creations in a mainstream gallery that will produce cash and fame, fast.
SoHo has gone from industrial wasteland to mallified fashion clown paradise overflowed with posh European tourists.
That art has lost its soul and authenticity is painfully obvious. The loss of New York City’s soul and heart, truthfulness and rough rawness in favor of the false posies of the fashionistas is what hurts the most.
A city of contradictions and contrasts, New York is capable of looking rundown and filthy and ultra-manicured and plastic at the same time. Lately, since the new millennium “New York Renaissance” (a real, spectacular one) got started, New York is veering towards its “too rich” side. Without being nostalgic for the crime and death days, I do feel the danger of Manhattan being slowly transformed into a big island department store that only the absurdly affluent can afford.
That our city might lose its traditional crude vibe in favor of this homogenization of the commercial banality (they way it already feels in many/most neighborhoods) is a worrisome concern.
There seems to be no happy medium for New York. It’s either the abysmal desolation of SoHo in the 70’s or the overdeveloped SoHo of the 90’s and the new century.
Will New York be able to maintain her traditional, fragile but steady equilibrium between rags and riches?
