NYC 1983–84 NYC PIER 34 Something Possible Everywhere Something Possible PIER 34 Something Possible Everywhere NYC 1983–84 PIER 34 Something Possible Everywhere NYC 1983–84 Jane Bauman PIER 34 Mike Bidlo Something Possible Everywhere Paolo Buggiani NYC 1983–84 Keith Davis Steve Doughton John Fekner David Finn Jean Foos Luis Frangella Valeriy Gerlovin Judy Glantzman Peter Hujar Alain Jacquet Kim Jones Rob Jones Stephen Lack September 30–November 20 Marisela La Grave Opening reception: September 29, 7–9pm Liz-N-Val Curated by Jonathan Weinberg Bill Mutter Featuring photographs by Andreas Sterzing Michael Ottersen Organized by the Hunter College Art Galleries Rick Prol Dirk Rowntree Russell Sharon Kiki Smith Huck Snyder 205 Hudson Street Andreas Sterzing New York, New York Betty Tompkins Hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 1–6pm Peter White David Wojnarowicz Teres Wylder Rhonda Zwillinger Andreas Sterzing, Pier 34 & Pier 32, View from Hudson River, 1983 FOREWORD This exhibition catalogue celebrates the moment, thirty-three This exhibition would not have been made possible without years ago, when a group of artists trespassed on a city-owned the generous support provided by Carol and Arthur Goldberg, Joan building on Pier 34 and turned it into an illicit museum and and Charles Lazarus, Dorothy Lichtenstein, and an anonymous incubator for new art. It is particularly fitting that the 205 donor. Furthermore, we could not have realized the show without Hudson Gallery hosts this show given its proximity to where the the collaboration of its many generous lenders: Allan Bealy and terminal building once stood, just four blocks from 205 Hudson Sheila Keenan of Benzene Magazine; Hal Bromm Gallery and Hal Street. One of the great pleasures of this exhibition is the way it Bromm, Sam Kogon, Alex Markwith, and Don Meris; Light and reconnects us to the waterfront, particularly through the lens of Toby Buggiani; Julie Davis; Delaware Art Museum and Margaret Andreas Sterzing’s cinematic photographs. As Mike Bidlo and Winslow, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art; Asher Edelman David Wojnarowicz suggest, there is a deep connection between and Edelman Arts; Eric Javits; Kim E. Jones; Hebe Joy; and the the flow of the Hudson River—the unceasing traffic under and Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art; P.P.O.W. Gallery across it—and the constant flux of creation that is so central to and Wendy Olsoff and Anneliis Beadnell; Tom Rauffenbart; art-making in this city. Beatricia Sagar; and Anders Wahlstedt Fine Art. Something Possible Everywhere: Pier 34 NYC, 1983–84 We would like to acknowledge the following individuals owes its success to the dedication and hard work of numerous whose energy and commitment have been integral to the achieve- individuals and institutions. First and foremost, we thank all of ment and success of this exhibition: Howard Singerman, Phyllis the artists who worked at Pier 34 and are the inspiration for this and Joseph Caroff Chair of the Department of Art and Art History exhibition. We are tremendously grateful to the exhibition cura- and Executive Director; Joachim Pissarro, Bershad Professor and tor, Jonathan Weinberg, for his passion and dedication to this Director; Jocelyn Spaar, Curatorial Assistant; Jenn Bratovich, important and underexamined aspect of the early 1980s down- Gallery Assistant; Phi Nguyen, Preparator; and our Joan Lazarus town art scene; and to photographer Andreas Sterzing, whose Exhibition Fellows Mikey Estes and Susan Breyer. The catalogue collaboration has been instrumental in the creation of this exhi- owes it thoughtful design to Tim Laun and Natalie Wedeking, bition and catalogue. Thank you to the numerous artists who with timely editorial support from Amelia Kutschbach. We also contributed recollections for the catalogue and to those who express our gratitude to Hunter President Jennifer J. Raab, contributed on other artists’ behalf. The outpouring of enthusi- Provost Dr. Lon Kaufman, and Dean Andrew J. Polsky for their asm by so many involved with Pier 34 is beyond touching. ongoing support of the Hunter College Art Galleries. —Sarah Watson, Chief Curator; Annie Wischmeyer, Associate Curator 9 Andreas Sterzing, David and Mike at the Pier, 1983 INTRODUCTION THE PIER 34 EXPERIMENT JONATHAN WEINBERG In one of Andreas Sterzing’s most beautiful photographs of In 1932, when the enormous building on Pier 34 first took Pier 34, Mike Bidlo and David Wojnarowicz sprawl out on the its place in the network of shipping terminals around Manhat- grass that has mysteriously grown inside the waterfront build- tan, part of what was then the largest port in the world, Bidlo ing. Bidlo and Wojnarowicz’s pose recalls the relaxed posture and Wojnarowicz’s lazy posture amid the ruins of the waterfront of the male figures in Édouard Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe. would be unthinkable. It is just as incongruous today given the Wojnarowicz sexily lolls back as Bidlo speaks to him; both are wealthy neighborhood’s transformation into fashionable prom- oblivious to the endless stream of traffic of the Holland Tunnel, enades and million-dollar condos, not to mention the presence running just beneath the pier, and the thousands of commut- of heightened security at the entrances of the Holland Tunnel ers pouring into the Financial District to the south. Painted to guard against terrorist attacks. How did such a monumen- behind them on the wall is an enormous head outlined in black. tal structure, at such a key location—straddling the Tunnel’s Their friend, Luis Frangella, had likely only just finished it, air-shaft towers—come to be abandoned, and how did it become but it fuses so perfectly with the cracked and stained plaster, it an epicenter for art-making in the 1980s? seems ancient, like a fresco in Pompeii. Indeed, the dilapidated Something Possible Everywhere: Pier 34 NYC, 1983–84 state of the building, with its rusted institutional light fixtures revisits this extraordinary place and time when Wojnarowicz, dangling from the ceiling, broken glass dividers, and crumbling Bidlo, and many of their friends effectively seized a city-owned floors, suggests that some sort of Pompeian disaster has recently pier and filled it with art. Sterzing’s remarkable photographs, occurred, emptying the space of its dockworkers and all their along with related images by Peter Hujar, Marisela La Grave, ceaseless activity. But, if so, Bidlo and Wojnarowicz are oblivious and Dirk Rowntree, document how these artists turned the to it, as they relax in this strange urban pastoral. Ward Line shipping terminal at the foot of Canal Street into 11 a series of makeshift art galleries and studios. Accompanying in this city for years said it was the first time they experienced these photographs are paintings and sculptures, made by the fulfillment in terms of contact with the art scene and strangers.”1 many artists who worked on the pier. Sadly almost all of the art In their statement Bidlo and Wojnarowicz speak of Pier 34 made in this unique locale no longer exists—Jean Foos managed almost as a curated exhibition that happened over a matter of to salvage a window-shade bracket that jutted out from Wojn- months. Yet Wojnarowicz actually “discovered” the Ward Line arowicz’s Krazy Kat mural; David Finn drew some figure studies terminal at Pier 34 in 1981 and began to paint animals and cartoon on city-government stationery he found on-site. The presence characters on its walls and on those of Pier 28 further south.2 of contemporaneous work in the exhibition makes tangible the The name Ward Line, which was emblazoned on the facade of physicality of the waterfront art and its larger aesthetic context. the terminal building at the time, refers to the Ward Line New The artists who worked on Pier 34 crossed generations, York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company. The enterprise, best from established figures like Alain Jacquet and Ruth Kligman to known for its boats that went back and forth to Cuba before emerging artists like Steven Doughton and Rhonda Zwillinger; World War II, went out of business in the 1950s, but the building they worked in a variety of media and styles, from the perfor- name stuck. In 1932 the government built the enormous struc- mance art of Kim Jones and Paolo Buggiani to the expressionism ture, with its waiting rooms, offices, and vast hangarlike loading of Judy Glantzman and Stephen Lack. This diversity, combined area at the back, which they originally leased to the Clyde-Mal- with the site-specificity of works by artists like John Fekner and lory Steamship Line and later to the Ward Line.3 By the 1960s Teres Wydler, challenges the stereotypes of the 1980s art scene the advent of air transportation and container shipping, which as a conservative turn toward easel painting that was driven by demanded acres of space, rendered Pier 34 and most of Manhat- the market. Indeed the chief instigators of the Pier 34 experi- tan’s other port facilities obsolete. New York City’s near-bank- ment, Wojnarowicz and his cohort, Bidlo, self-consciously saw ruptcy in the 1970s, along with the protracted controversy over the site as anticommercial. As rumors spread in the spring of the future of the Westway highway project, meant that there 1983 of what was happening on the waterfront, the two artists were no funds to renovate or demolish the waterfront structures released a statement to friends in the press that explained their as they fell into disrepair and eventual ruin. Yet in a city where ethos of resisting the gallery system and creating an opportunity space was and continues to be at a premium, these enormous for anyone “to explore any image in any material on any surface buildings lured artists.