New York City, renown as a mecca to artists from every genre, can be described as maintaining a longtime abusive relationship with its culturally noteworthy residents, who simultaneously are apparently nurtured but at the same time submitted to torture with violent evictions and the destruction of their art. In a forthcoming text privately shared with ART EVICTION but reportedly to be imminently released as an article by an unnamed publication (who we will certainly credit as soon as informed), arts journalist J.T. Wilhelm accurately recounts:
“Evictions are nothing new in the biographies of artists; in 1932 while away in Chicago, Isamu Noguchi learned that he had been evicted from his studio at 58 West 57th Street. In 1936, the late Willem De Kooning moved to a loft in 156 West 22nd Street; during this period the artist became engaged to Elaine Fried (Elaine de Kooning) and they moved to a larger space in the same building. They married in 1943; two years later, the artists were evicted.
“Long after MoMA [the Museum Of Modern Art] had acquired his work in the mid-1960’s, Robert Indiana was evicted from his studio and home in a 5-story building on The Bowery in 1978. “After fourteen years my landlord decided to jack up the rent,” he bitterly reminisced to Index Magazine. Somehow, he was able to move the entire contents of his New York City studio by truck (and ferry) to rural Maine. But perhaps the move from NYC is why Indiana did not reportedly achieve – as of yet – similar market success as Roy Lichtenstein or others who stayed near the city despite its many challenges.
“In the important 1999 New York Civil Court case Haberman v. Gotbaum [Editor’s note: See Tracie Rozhon, “Judge Paints a Portrait Of the Artist As a Tenant,” The New York Times, September 9, 1999] , in which the building owner failed in an attempt to evict the (late) illustrator Mark Gotbaum from his studio/apartment of over 30 years on Riverside Drive by 92nd Street, the presiding Judge Ling-Cohan clarified in a poignant decision:
“Many artists throughout history have used their homes as art studios including Chagall, Picasso, Giacometti, Duchamp and Georgia O’Keefe… If every New York artist who did art work out of his or her home were able to be evicted, then the next Robert Rauschenberg or Andy Warhol (all New York artists who worked out of their home) may never have [had] the opportunity to evolve and become a success.”
ART EVICTION 