The 112 Greene Street denizens, like many young artists, tended to be skeptical of capitalism and against the war in Vietnam. According to artist Mary Heilmann, “Most of us came to 112 as bohemian outsiders and almost Marxists—against capitalist culture.”45 According to Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Lew was so opposed to art making as moneymaking that one of his criteria for accepting a work of art at 112 Greene was that it not be intended for sale.46 It was more honorable to make work that was embedded in the life they were living. In 1972 Matta-Clark made a piece called Walls Paper, for which he photographed walls of decaying buildings, made giant prints of them, and mounted them up on the walls of 112 as a new kind of wallpaper.47 Also in 1972, he made a performance piece in a dumpster on Greene Street. Beckley’s memory: “[Y]ou saw the umbrellas peeking up from the dumpster, moving around. That was pretty good.”48 As with Trisha Brown, this was part of the aesthetic of bringing art outside the gallery or theater and into the streets.
Flyer designed by Steve Paxton based on a Japanese wood print, 1971. Photo: Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Another urban project of Matta-Clark’s brought graffiti writers down from the Bronx. He photographed sides of subway cars, mounted them on long panels, and set them up as an exhibit on a Mercer Street sidewalk. According to Terry O’Reilly, who assisted him, “Originally he set up his camera on subway platforms and photographed the trains when they came to a stop. This did not work well, so he went out to the train yards and broke into the yards just like the kids would do and photographed their work.”49 Matta-Clark’s application to exhibit these images at the Washington Square Art Fair was rejected, so he parked his delivery truck and invited his graffiti friends to decorate the truck. At the same time, he displayed some of his train-sized photographs of their work, which he called photoglyphs, right there on the sidewalk and called it the Alternatives to Washington Square Art Fair; he exhibited more photoglyphs at 112 Greene. This celebration of the “ordinary” predates the art world’s love affair with graffiti.50 (But I note that Twyla Tharp had already gotten the idea to have graffiti writers onstage as part of the set design for Deuce Coupe, which premiered with the Joffrey Ballet in 1973.)
Matta-Clark’s anarchistic streak was reinforced by others at 112 Greene Street. As the casually organized “Anarchitecture” group—which included Matta-Clark, Harris, Nonas, Carol Goodden, Jene Highstein, Tina Girouard, and Laurie Anderson—they would get together and discuss architecture, space, language, and the possibility of subverting existing norms.51 They held an exhibit of their work in March 1974 at 112 Greene Street. Each artist contributed anonymous photographs that she or he felt represented her or his “idea of anarchitecture, such as liminal or overlooked spaces, and they made the works look anonymous.”52 It was the last show at 112 Greene.
The sense of possibility in SoHo was heady. Highstein (who found mover’s work for his cousin Philip Glass in SoHo) called 112 Greene “a free-for-all…. It really was an open forum. It didn’t have any structure. It was just a room, a big room where anything could happen.”53 Like Trisha Brown at 80 Wooster Street, the artists were finding ways to fit their actions into the existing architecture. Sculptor Richard Nonas, who helped Brown outfit her performers in harnesses for her gravity-defying equipment dances, said, “There was no separation between the works and the space.”54 And, possibly because there was no profit on the horizon, things were fluid. Multidisciplinary artist Tina Girouard (video, installation, fabric, paintings) recalled that the exhibitions would change continually, becoming more like performance.55 Suzanne Harris, who had performed with Brown, produced a double installation of Flying Machine and The Wheels in 1973. For the first, she invited viewers to strap themselves to ropes attached to a specially made ceiling. Next to it was a contraption made of four large wheels that audience members could set in motion.56 “The base of it stayed stable but the different parts rotated,” Beckley recalled. “She went from one rotating thing to another. It was like a bridge from the sculptural aspects of 112 to the dance.”57 Others who presented performances or exhibits at 112 Greene were Vito Acconci, Alice Aycock, Jared Bark, Joseph Beuys, Keith Sonnier, and William Wegman. The Grand Union performed there in February 1972 with Mary Overlie as a guest.
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Since they didn’t want to make a living from their art, this cluster of close-knit friends, having given many dinner and dance parties, figured out how to create a communal business: they opened the restaurant FOOD. In 1971 Carol Goodden, who was living with Matta-Clark and dancing with Trisha Brown, bought a small Puerto Rican food shop on the corner of Prince and Wooster Streets. With the help of other SoHo friends, they transformed it into a center run by and for artists. Philip Glass installed the radiators,58 and visual artist Jared Bark put up a new ceiling.59 Goodden was determined to pay artists well for their work and accommodate them with flexible hours.60 FOOD was the only restaurant in the neighborhood with healthy fare, a welcome warm spot on the otherwise empty streets. It specialized in fresh fish, soups, and salads, and the menu changed daily. Members of the theater group Mabou Mines, musicians from Philip Glass’s ensemble, and dancers of the Natural History of the American Dancer cooked, served, and stocked supplies. When it was her turn to cook, Barbara Dilley made food you ate with your hands: “Shells from mussels in broth become scoops for rice pilaf. There were artichokes to dip in melted lemon butter.”61 Nancy Lewis remembers making salads while her future husband, musician Richard Peck, washed dishes.62 Artist Robert Kushner was dessert chef. Everything about FOOD was cooperative. They took turns cooking, relying on family recipes and artistic flair for presentation. Rauschenberg, Don Judd, and Keith Sonnier all did stints as guest chefs.63
In one of his first acts of deconstruction, Matta-Clark tore down the walls separating the kitchen and dining area, putting the cooking in full view of patrons as though it were a performance. In fact, Goodden and Matta-Clark thought of FOOD as a long-term art piece.64 One example of Matta-Clark’s food art is described by Claire Barliant in Paris Review: “Gordon did a meal called Matta-Bones, where everything he served was on the bone and at the end he drilled holes through the bones to make necklaces.”65
Woman Walking Down a Ladder (1973), by Trisha Brown, 130 Greene Street. Photo: Babette Mangolte.
FOOD thrived as an artist-run restaurant from 1971 to 1974, when it changed hands. (The heyday of 112 Greene Street also ended in 1974; in the eighties it morphed into White Columns in the West Village.) Throwing themselves into the work at the restaurant exemplifies Marcuse’s concept of “erotic labor.” Richard Goldstein interprets that to mean the kind of work that “enlists your deepest passions…. Lots of people found the pleasures of erotic labor in political organizing. This was about work as an act of love. Marcuse made me see that when work is love it can be liberating.”66
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It’s often been said that SoHo in the seventies was ideal for artists. But the questions come up: For whom was it ideal, and who got left out? It’s no secret that the population in SoHo was largely white, young Americans.
It should be noted, however, that there was a parallel pocket of fervent dance activity for a more diverse group of dance artists about three miles north. Alvin Ailey had helped launch Clark Center for the Performing Arts as a midtown dance space. Affiliated with the Westside YWCA, Clark Center was a crucial hub of dance that was much more racially inclusive than SoHo. Some of the dance artists nurtured in this studio at Eighth Avenue at 50th Street were Rod Rodgers, Eleo Pomare, Donald McKayle, Mariko Sanjo, Brenda Dixon (later Brenda Dixon Gottschild), Dianne McIntyre, William Dunas, Elizabeth Keen, Chuck Davis (founder of DanceAfrica),
