Eye On Brooklyn: Recent Comments

Comment on The Future of Williamsburg Art Scene?

Scott Laugenour — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:47:25 GMT

Follow Joe to Leipzig.

Crossing the ocean instead of the river is what I hope we see more of in the Williamsburg arts scene. Although they didn't have the collective spending of the Manhattan collector set, Europeans and South Americans visiting Boreas or other Williamsburg galleries had the spirit and could make it fun and rewarding to show art.

Consultants, although potentially lucrative as clients, add a second layer of risk-aversion to the American scene. They also make the experience far less fun. Dealing with a collector who thinks for himself, gets sincere joy from the work, and understands the real support he or she is giving a young artist (and a young gallery) is much more fun, although admittedly a riskier business model.

Well, when did my accountant ever think I was not crazy?

I base myself now in Pittsfield, MA with the Brooklyn spirit. It's close to home, cheaper, still risky, and with potential. I'm always happy when Brooklyn friends check me out and pay me a visit.

International visitors always seemed to "get it" in Williamsburg better than day-trippers from Manhattan did. So, I say to the Williamsburg galleries: circumvent Manhattan by being both very local and very international. How cool (and how strong) if we were all able to flit between Leipzig and Brooklyn.

Comment on The Future of Williamsburg Art Scene?

PF — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 13:49:05 GMT

Intellectually, I can see a certain beauty to the inevitability of the transformation from Bohemia to Nohemia ('bloodless'? just made that up). Like a law of Nature - like erosion or entropy - though I guess the real estate crowd sees it in a more positive light.

My gut, on the other hand, responds with simple dismay at the approaching blandness.

To which my intellect responds, one more time, "do I have to find that beautiful too?"

Comment on Williamsburg, Brooklyn Art Scene: “…the guy on the bike that takes pictures at all the openings”

Carmen Einfinger — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 13:42:11 GMT

Ola Larry, I thought I would respond to your comments on R.C. Baker.
It must be such a hard battle, to compete with new york's city financianlly strong art market. As you know, it never is about the art, but where the money is. Chelsea has the money and so it goes.... But if it makes you feel any better, I AM a New York City artist, and it didn't make a difference for me either...... I guess it might be about, finding out where we belong as artists, and what we want for ourselves from our work and then things fall into place. I just returned from China, and the creative energy over there is BUZZING. Comparatively there is no BUZZ in Chelsea, even though that still is the leading art market in the world, however only for it's Wall Street and foreign investments.
If you are curious to see my exhibition I just had in China, please go to: www.nyartsbeijing.com

Carmen

Comment on Williamsburg, Brooklyn Art Scene: “…the guy on the bike that takes pictures at all the openings”

larry walczak — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 18:23:40 GMT

In this week's Village Voice (October 25-31)a writer named R.C. Baker reviewed Loren Munk's Dam Stuhltrager installation/exhibition "We Make Our Own Art History". Is it possible to review an exhibition by ignoring the main thrust of the show? R.C. Baker makes a case for that by barely mentioning Williamsburg in the short essay. Is this another example of Williamsburg being just an after-thought to contemporary art in New York City. Also brings to mind William Powhida's revealation of Voice critic Kim Levin's failure to mention Williamsburg even once in her exhibition of letters & writings recently shown at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in Soho. Manhattan-based art critics seem prone to write about Manhattan-based art/artists even when in Williamsburg confronted by a wall of photographs of Brooklyn artists & scads of documentation of a Brooklyn art neighborhood. Not only is it difficult to get such writers to cross the East River, it appears to be even more difficult to digest that there is actually an art community here. Years ago I asked the long-time photo critic of the Voice Vince Aletti why he never reviewed Brooklyn photo exhibits and he snapped at me, saying "I don't have enough time to cover all the shows in Manhattan and now you want me to come to Brooklyn?" Just thought I'd ask.

Comment on Williamsburg, Brooklyn Art Scene: “…the guy on the bike that takes pictures at all the openings”

Loren Munk — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 16:51:30 GMT

There is no artist’s utopia, the good old days are good because they’re gone. What’s happening in Williamsburg is what happens to every neighborhood that becomes desirable, people want to live there. It happened to East 10th Street during the late fifties, people said the scene was dead the “10th Street Touch” was passé. Little did they realize that twenty some odd years latter another group of outsiders would move to that grungy old thoroughfare and start a whole new East Village scene.

An artist’s community isn’t so much about the buildings and roads and trees, it’s about the people, their relationships, and the energy that they transmit to each other and to the world. Anyone who decides to become an artist has to know it ain’t going to be easy, little job security, no health or dental care, crap for a retirement pension. Artists have to be adaptable and inventive. In the art jungle, it’s the strong who survive.

Building might fall down, streets change names, but it’s the artists who make the community. Nothing stays the same except the fact that every thing changes, Even Chelsea’s not permanent, get used to it.

Comment on Williamsburg, Brooklyn Art Scene:Notes From A Curmudgeon

Carla Gannis — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 16:22:15 GMT

Ward,
I've been living upstate since May, but keeping the Williamsburg apt on South 4th. Two weeks ago however I made my final exit from Williamsburg, moving (or throwing out) all my dragged off the street furniture, 6 year collection of neighborhood exhibition cards and ephemera, etc... I was flooded with nostalgia on my moving day, but a walk down Bedford – where I didn't recognize a soul – brought it home to me that an “authentic” era has passed.

I think Rochefoucauld's "The only thing constant in life is change” has probably been quoted ad nauseam and now seems trite, but it's axiomatic nonetheless. (And often knowing change is a constant gives artists hope that their dire circumstances will improve : ) Still, a great deal of the changes today in the arts, the art scene, New York in general, are unsettling in their “spectacleness,” and making curmudgeons out of many of us who were once idealists. Cheers to you. ***And thanks Larry for the blog!***

Comment on Williamsburg, Brooklyn Art Scene: “…the guy on the bike that takes pictures at all the openings”

Edward Monovich — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:45:41 GMT

The evolving story of Williamsburg seems like an allegory for contemporary art in the United States. Not to generalize, but most artists I know feel communities are at their best when saturated with new ideas, experimentation, geographical closeness and a salient absence of self-interested competition, (as it was in Williamsburg at its crescendo). So hard to build, so easy to tear down.

Edward Monovich

Comment on Williamsburg, Brooklyn Art Scene:Notes From A Curmudgeon

Mery Lynn — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:54:31 GMT

Ward,

Where did you end up moving to?

After my ordeal in the Gretsch Building, I moved to LA. Just had a solo show at a gallery in Bergamot Station and a review in the LA Times. Yes, I'm bragging but New York conditioned me to persistent failure so it's as much shock as crowing.

I miss the old Williamsburg too, but must say LA, except for the driving, is a great place.

Comment on Williamsburg, Brooklyn Art Scene: “…the guy on the bike that takes pictures at all the openings”

William Powhida — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 20:19:23 GMT

I actually lived in Williamsburg for 8 years, and for the first three I was buried in Grad School land at Hunter College. It was in early 2002 that I started writing for the Rail, and really began to experience the gallery scene, which was vibrant and community oriented.

Following the Parker's Box, IAM 5 show, many of the galleries that I wrote about left for Chelsea. What I hoped to convey in the Eulogy was the personal sense of loss I felt, when the gallery community thinned out. James Wagner and Barry Hoggard recently told me that they felt like they need a car to see the shows in Williamsburg now, as the old art crawl is no longer possible. The reality of the exodus has greatly reduced the accessibility of art in the neighborhood. It was a thing of beauty to be able to see thirty shows on a Sunday afternoon in Williamsburg, and know the people involved. It's a far cry from the overwhelming and impersonal density of Chelsea. I guess I wasn't trying to be a dick by writing a eulogy, but to examine the cause of death. Having been so connected to the neighborhood and the community from the Rail meetings to the old art crawl, it was hard to move to Fort Greene last month and not feel a loss.

I wish the galleries still in Williamsburg the best, and hopefully new galleries will open their doors. It's just a shame that there is little support from the borough and the city to keep Williamsburg a viable alternative to Chelsea. The low rents that sparked the opening of so many spaces a decade or more ago have soared and the impending development of the waterfront doesn't seem to have any place for an artistic community.

Anyway, it was an amazing and intense four years of artistic and intellectual development. It's something I hope all young artists and writers will have a chance to experience wherever they are; Bushwick, Berlin, Singapore...

-Cheers,
William