Styles & Movements

East Village Art Scene

The "East Village" is a term developed by realtors for New York City's Lower East Side, an area bounded by Houston Street, 14th Street, Avenue A, and the East River. The gallery scene that developed in the East Village was short lived, lasting roughly from 1980 to 1984. In the late 1970s, the East Village's profusion of underground subcultures offered an environment where artists could exhibit work that was experimental, untried, and, consequently, ill-suited for the established corporate art market centered uptown and in SoHo. In addition, the nightclubs and bars of this area provided spaces where artists, performers, and musicians mingled, developing hybrid events than harkened back to the Happenings of the 60s, another downtown phenomenon.

The first galleries were makeshift exhibition spaces started by artists or their friends in apartments and eventually in storefronts. By 1984, however, the East Village art scene was fully entrenched within the workings of the New York art world with over seventy commercial galleries located in the space of fourteen blocks. All but a few of these galleries closed by the late 1980s. This rapid growth and decline may be accounted for by the international wave of art speculation and investment that was fueled largely by the profits from the financial boom period of the 80s.

Artists whose work became known through these galleries include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, David Wojnarowicz, Judy Glantzman, and Tony Oursler.