4 ART AND THE CITY ART TIMES ART DISTRICTS London and New York are the two powerhouses of the international art world, Artist’s supporting galleries, auction houses, museums and, of course, artists. The areas where the latter congregate quickly gain a reputation for style, innovation and creativity – prompting the arrival of dealers and property developers. Based in London and New York respectively, Ben Luke and quarters Kathryn Tully compare how the artists’ areas in the two cities have changed over time LONDON (YBAs), and gathered in a then un- that the character of the place and the It is astonishing that until 2000, when likely crucible for cultural renaissance It is important to try to strike a things that made it successful as an area Tate Modern opened, London lacked – the East End districts of Shoreditch of regeneration can remain in some a national museum of modern art. and Hoxton. balance between ensuring that form, but without stultifying it and Instead, 20th-century art was housed In Lucky Kunst, his memoir of the trying to keep it as a museum.” alongside British art in the Tate Gallery, YBA era, Gregor Muir, now director of the character of the place and the Mirza is particularly focused on now Tate Britain, on Millbank. When it the contemporary gallery Hauser and the area around the 2012 Olympic arrived, Tate Modern shone as a beacon Wirth, remembers arriving as a pen- things that made it successful as an Park. “Hackney Wick has the largest for London’s newfound conviction in niless critic in a Shoreditch suffering concentration of artists anywhere in the kind of art that had long been the from the economic inequalities of the area of regeneration can remain in Europe. We’ve been working with the object of ridicule and derision. Margaret Thatcher era. “People forget LDA (London Development Agency), Tate’s success is just the most visible this, but it was cold, it was horrible, some form, but without stultifying it on cultural planning for that area, manifestation of this phenomenon. there were rats, it was disgusting. You which recognises that lots of artists Across the city, public venues present got lost there very quickly because and trying to keep it as a museum choose to live there, with low-cost world-class exhibitions of new art, there wasn’t infrastructure like in other housing and studio space. What we’re while major commercial spaces now areas of London. It literally had been that a more official art scene began to exploring is whether we could pur- rival them in the scale and ambition abandoned,” Muir told me. develop. “It became at that point far chase a building, and involve artists of their shows, and the crowds they Often without access to basic ameni- more noted for galleries and a deepen- and cultural organisations so that attract. Meanwhile, since its founding ties, artists squatted and created studi- ing picture that would extend all the they remain a feature of that area as in 2003, the Frieze Art Fair has become os within abandoned warehouses and way down to Cambridge Heath Road it grows and develops.” one of the world’s top art fairs. industrial units, whose scale was cru- and Vyner Street [in neighbouring She is conducting a review of All this is the result of a perfect cial. “For artists, it was about space for Bethnal Green], which took up a lot studio space in London in response storm of events and circumstances production and places to exhibit their of the people who had been pushed to concerns that there may not be around 20 years ago, combining the work, and that really became vital.” out by developers.” enough provision, particularly for prominence of ambitious curators like Among the now seminal events of Shoreditch remains an art centre young artists, in the wake of the Tate’s Nicholas Serota in public insti- the early nineties was Fete Worse Than today, but it lacks the creative buzz it Olympic developments. tutions; the presence of radical con- Death in the largely derelict Hoxton once had – essentially because only “London is a place of change and ceptual artists at art colleges; Charles Square. Organised by the late Joshua the most successful artists of the early growth,” she says. “We can’t stop it Saatchi’s eye for controversial art; and Compston, it featured anarchic stalls nineties were able to remain living and from growing – it wouldn’t be re- the revitalisation of the Turner Prize and performances by artists includ- working there. The East End is still the alistic, or desirable, actually. But we by Tate and Channel 4. ing Hirst and Emin and Lucas. “That dominant zone for London’s artists but do recognise that artists are at the But at the heart of it were the artists early scene was a part one, as it were, they are now more widely distributed. forefront of improving an area, un- themselves, and the area of London which saw much more hardened, “It’s only after you’ve seen some- less they get priced out quite quickly. that housed them. In 1988, Damien more squat-like activities on the part thing like a Shoreditch or a Hoxton And whilst a lot of artists will be com- Hirst staged Freeze, an exhibition of of artists, who were very efficient that you learn what the process has fortable about moving and being no- fellow Goldsmiths students, in a dis- at taking over spaces come rain or been so you can do it slightly differently madic, keeping them there is valuable used Docklands building. Many of shine,” Muir says. “Then you had a next time,” says Munira Mirza, Advi- for the area.” those students, like Sarah Lucas and much more trendy culture that fol- sor for Arts and Culture to London Such a conviction reflects those nine- Michael Landy, and like-minded art- lowed from about the mid-1990s on, Mayor Boris Johnson, who helps define ties artists’ achievement: they helped ists of the same generation like Tracey where Shoreditch would appear on culture’s presence within regeneration change the fabric of an entire swathe Emin and Gillian Wearing, became the cover of Time Out, so it became projects in London. “It is important to of London, but also contemporary art’s known as the Young British Artists like downtown New York.” It was then try to strike a balance between ensuring value in urban society as a whole. ART TIMES ART AND THE CITY 5 Opposite: Below left: Below right: [New York’s] bubbling, vibrant Live East, Die Young Cops and robbers style Eleven Spring Street in New graffiti art in London grafitti on wall in Lower York’s Nolita district, which community of artists … will always Eastside Manhattan was regularly decorated by find ways of owning and defining its street artists urban terrain NEW YORK the art establishment. Artists started To speak of how New York’s art com- moving into the Lower East Side, a munities have shaped the city seems poor immigrant neighbourhood, in somehow disingenuous when all of its the 1970s and small community gal- five boroughs are teaming with world- leries began springing up in the dis- class museums, galleries, auction trict’s dilapidated tenement buildings. houses and art fairs. Indeed, finding a Today, along with swank restaurants, district that has not been profoundly bars and boutiques, the area is home influenced by artistic endeavour is a to around 40 galleries, including many stretch. New York has always inspired tiny spaces featuring emerging artists. great artists and attracted great art, It once was a world apart from the which has sustained its reputation as scene in Chelsea just a little further an art capital of the world. uptown, where most of the cavern- Still, artists have always colonised ous, high-gloss galleries belonging to certain New York neighbourhoods and the city’s elite dealers that show world made them their own, and they in turn renowned artists can be found. have sucked in many more of their However, that has been changing contemporaries. Chinese artist and fast, particularly since the New Mu- activist Ai Weiwei recently described seum focusing on contemporary art the creative energy of Manhattan’s East opened on the Bowery in 2007. It was Village, where he spent 12 years in the the first new art museum to be built eighties and early nineties living in a downtown, on a street once famous basement apartment, surrounded by for its homeless shelters and flop hous- fellow artists. To him, the East Village es. It became both an endorsement felt “like a volcano, with smoke always of the vitality of the Lower East Side’s up and down between the top four Houston Street and the Bowery. The night each to adorn its walls. billowing out of the top.” contemporary art movement and a exhibition floors, is not your average wall in question formally housed a The organizers showed the space The rapid gentrification of Manhat- highly visible sign of the sort of rapid Lower East Side gallery. And Bruce Shepard Fairey mural, which the art- to a few journalists at the end of Oc- tan’s SoHo and Greenwich Village, gentrification and real estate develop- Nauman, whose new solo exhibi- ist, who shot to fame after creating tober, but as the project is illegal, this which from the 1960s onwards, forced ment that could easily suffocate it. The tion For Children/For Beginners is Barack Obama’s iconic presidential was done on the condition that the resident artists to move to cheaper banner demanding, “Where have all currently on show there, is not your campaign posters, only completed organizers’ names, the location of the neighbourhoods such as Manhat- the junkies gone?” that hung outside average Lower East Side artist – he earlier this year.