Soho: The Rise and Fall of an Artist's Colony

SoHo: The Rise and Fall of an Artists' Colony documents how a little-known industrial neighborhood in New York unintentionally became - for a brief period - a nexus of creative activity. Taking advantage of loft occupancy laws that allowed artists to live where they worked, a band of enterprising people began settling in New York's SoHo in the 1960s, renovating industrial spaces for personal use. Fueled by world-of-mouth, the area soon grew to be a center for artistic creation. And New York's one-of-a-kind urban artists' colony was born.
Richard Kostelanetz not only discusses how the artists came and why, he also focuses on some of the most creative, describing both the lives and work of artists Nam June Paik, Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman, Hannah Wilke, Richard Schechner, George Maciunas, and Alan Suicide, among others. The galleries followed the artists, and the artists utilized the places around them, fashioning their homes, their buildings, and even their streets into makeshift exhibition and performance spaces. Such an ideal situation - totally unplanned - could not last forever; the author shows how market forces squeezed out this art utopia, trading in on the allure of its unique character, to be replaced by a shadow of itself, "SoMall," with the coming of trendy stores and restaurants. SoHo: The Rise and Fall of an Artists' Colony provides a long-overdue analysis of a remarkable neighborhood that transformed the art and culture of the last four decades and the history of New York.

Richard Kostelanetz is a critic and literary artist. He moved to SoHo just as it was being developed by the underground arts community, and his home-apply named WordShip-has become one of the most famous loft/work space environments of the city. He is the author of over 40 original books as well as 40 edited volumes. He lives in New York City.