Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, [1] which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines. [2] [3]
Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, [1] which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines. [2] [3]
Colab members came together as a collective in 1977, [4] first using the name Green Corporation, and initially received a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Workshop Grant through Center for New Art Activities, Inc., a small not-for-profit organization formed in 1974. In 1978, Collaborative Projects was incorporated as a not-for-profit of its own. By raising its own sources of funding, Colab was in control of its own exhibitions and cable TV shows. [5] [1] : 9–11
Advocating a form of cultural activism that was purely artist driven, the group created artworks, negotiated venues, curated shows, and engaged in discourse that responded to the political themes and predicaments of their time, among them the recessions of the 1970s, the Reagan era of budget cuts and nuclear armament, the housing crisis and gentrification in New York City, and other pressing social issues. [6]
In order to become a member, an artist had to attend three consecutive meetings. Artists who proposed artistic projects for funding needed at least two Colab members involved in the project. [1] : 9–11
From November 1978, different artist members organized and installed original one-off group shows in their own studios or other temporary sites, such as The Batman Show, (591 Broadway 1979), Income and Wealth Show (5 Bleecker Street Store 1979), Doctors and Dentists Show (591 Broadway 1979), The Manifesto Show (5 Bleecker Street Store 1979), The Dog Show (591 Broadway 1979), Just Another Asshole Show (5 Bleecker Street Store), The Real Estate Show (Delancey Street, Jan. 1980), Jay Street Film Shows (1979), Exhibit A (93 Grand Street, 1979), Island of Negative Utopia (The Kitchen, 1984) and The Times Square Show [7] [8] [9] [10] [6] [11] (201 W 41st, June 1980): a large open exhibition near the center of New York's entertainment (and pornography) district (Times Square) that was put on with Bronx-based Fashion Moda. [12]
Seed money from the first Colab (Green Corp.) workshop grant through Center for New Art Inc. led to the creation of the Colab artists' TV series on Manhattan Cable (1978–1984) that included All Color News, [13] [14] [15] Potato Wolf and Red Curtain, and New Cinema - a screening room on 8th Street and St. Mark's Place for new wave Super 8 films transferred to video and projected on an Advent screen - the continued publication of X Motion Picture Magazine(1979) (whose first issue preceded the formation of Colab); [16] support and inspiration for the ABC No Rio cultural center (1980-82 - ongoing) that was created as a result of The Real Estate Show; support of Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine (1983), NightShift Theater 1979, Spanner Magazine (3 issues 1979), MWF Video Club (established in 1986) and Bomb Magazine (1981). [17] Membership in Colab shifted and evolved over the years, and some members of the original group are still highly visible active making art. In 1980, artists emulating 1970s Puerto Rican activists seized a building on New York's Lower East Side and opened it as a collectively run cultural center. ABC No Rio was passed on to successive managements until today it is an anarchist cultural center run by a collective with close ties to the publishing group Autonomedia." [18]
In 2016 A Book About Colab (and Related Activities) was published by Printed Matter, Inc. It was edited by Max Schumann, the director of Printed Matter, and contained a Foreword and Afterword by art writer and Colab member Walter Robinson. The book traces the output of Collaborative Projects from the late 1970s through the mid 1980s and a testimonial about their particular practice of collaboration, collectivity, and social engagement, while reflecting an iconic period of NYC cultural history. [1] : 9 In keeping with the democratic "by and for artists" ethos of Colab, the publication places this material alongside newly solicited texts from many of the group’s members – a mix of reflections and anecdotes, statements, manifestos, and excerpts from the ‘Colab Annual Report’, which provide a close perspective on the meaning of Colab for those who came into its orbit. [19] [20]
In 2011, Printed Matter, Inc. presented an exhibition entitled A Show about Colab (and Related Activities). [21] [22]
In 2012, The Hunter College Art Galleries presented Times Square Show Revisited, an in-depth look at the original Times Square Show (1980). [8] [9] [10] Times Square Show Revisited was the first focused assessment of the landmark exhibition organized by the artist group Collaborative Projects, Inc. [23]
In 2013, an exhibition workshop entitled XFR STN (Transfer Station) was held at the New Museum. [24]
In early 2014, there were four concurrent art exhibitions in New York City around The Real Estate Show : at James Fuentes Gallery, [25] ABC No Rio, [26] the Lodge Gallery, and Cuchifritos Gallery/Essex Street Market. [27] The Real Estate Show Revisited. That year Art International Radio also featured an interview and conversation between Jane Dickson, Coleen Fitzgibbon, and Becky Howland about Colab and the 1980 The Real Estate Show which birthed the ABC No Rio cultural center. [28] [29]
From April 15 to May 15, 2016, Printed Matter, Inc presented a restating of The A. More Store, a Colab-sponsored artists’ outlet for low-priced multiples from the early 1980s The selling exhibition included over 100 artworks from over 50 participating Colab members, including works on loan from historic A. More Stores. The first A. More Store evolved from the Gift Shop at the legendary Colab-organized The Times Square Show [30] [6] [11] and appeared shortly after on Broome Street in 1980 with the tag-line “You won’t pay more at the A. More Store”. Other iterations of the store were later presented at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Jack Tilton Gallery, White Columns, and Printed Matter, Inc. [31]
The 2017 documentary film Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat by Sara Driver contains extensive coverage of Colab, The Real Estate Show , The Times Square Show and ABC No Rio through on-camera interviews with once Colab president Coleen Fitzgibbon and art critic Carlo McCormick.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)In the late 1970s Smith joined Collaborative Projects, Inc., a loosely knit artists' cooperative that worked outside the commercial gallery system. Colab also ran a series of stores that sold inexpensive artworks and artist-made accessories. Smith was an avid participant and made her first screenprint, a T-shirt, for the souvenir shop at Colab's sprawling 1980 exhibition The Times Square Show.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.
No wave is a music and art genre, named for the transient avant-garde music and visual art scene from which it emerged in the late 1970s in downtown New York City.
Ludlow Street runs between Houston and Division Streets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Vehicular traffic runs south on this one-way street.
Tom Otterness is an American sculptor best known as one of America's most prolific public artists. Otterness's works adorn parks, plazas, subway stations, libraries, courthouses and museums around the world, notably in New York City's Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City and Life Underground in the 14th Street – Eighth Avenue New York Subway station. He contributed a balloon to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In 1994 he was elected as a member of the National Academy Museum.
ABC No Rio is a collectively-run non-profit arts organization on New York City's Lower East Side. It was founded in 1980 in a squat at 156 Rivington Street, following the eviction of the 1979-80 Real Estate Show. The centre featured an art gallery space, a zine library, a darkroom, a silkscreening studio, and public computer lab. In addition, it played host to a number of radical projects including weekly hardcore punk matinees and the city Food Not Bombs collective.
G. H. Hovagimyan is an American experimental cross-media, new media art and performance artist who lives and works in New York City.
Judy Rifka is an American artist active since the 1970s as a painter and video artist. She works heavily in New York City's Tribeca and Lower East Side and has associated with movements coming out of the area in the 1970s and 1980s such as Colab and the East Village, Manhattan art scene.
The Art Students League of New York Building is a building on 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The structure, designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh in the French Renaissance style, was completed in December 1892 and serves as the headquarters of the Art Students League of New York. The building was developed by the American Fine Arts Society (AFAS), formed in 1889 by five organizations including the Art Students League, the Society of American Artists, and the Architectural League of New York.
Boris Policeband was a no wave noise music performer who used dissonant violin, police radio transmissions, and voice. Boris Pearlman was a classically trained violist from New York City.
Alan W. Moore is an art historian and activist whose work addresses cultural economies and groups and the politics of collectivity. After a stint as an art critic, Moore made video art and installation art from the mid-1970s on and performed in the 1979 Public Arts International/Free Speech series. He has published several books and runs the House Magic information project on self-organized, occupied autonomous social centers. His partial autobiography was published in 2022 in The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest as Art Worker: Doing Time in the New York Artworld. Moore lives in Madrid.
Coleen Fitzgibbon is an American experimental film artist associated with Collaborative Projects, Inc.. She worked under the pseudonym Colen Fitzgibbon between the years 1973-1980. Fitzgibbon currently resides on Ludlow Street in New York City and in Montana.
Robin Winters is an American conceptual artist and teacher based in New York. Winters is known for creating solo exhibitions containing an interactive durational performance component to his installations, sometimes lasting up to two months. As an early practitioner of Relational Aesthetics Winters has incorporated such devices as blind dates, double dates, dinners, fortune telling, and free consultation in his performances. Throughout his career he has engaged in a wide variety of media, such as performance art, film, video, writing prose and poetry, photography, installation art, printmaking, drawing, painting, ceramic sculpture, bronze sculpture, and glassblowing. Recurring imagery in his work includes faces, boats, cars, bottles, hats, and the fool.
The Real Estate Show was a squatted exhibition by New York artists' group Colab, on the subject of landlord speculation in real estate held on New Year's Day in a vacant city-owned building at 123 Delancey Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City.
Ann Messner is an artist, activist, and a professor of fine arts at the Pratt Institute. Messner received her B.F.A. from the Pratt Institute in 1973.
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Richard Bosman is an American artist, educator, and illustrator. Bosman is best known for his paintings and prints. His work is often related to crime, adventure, and disaster narratives; rural Americana; and nature and domestic themes. He is associated with the Neo-expressionist movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Bosman was a member of Colab, the New York artist collective founded in 1977, and participated in the group's influential, “Times Square Show” (1980).
Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat is a 2017 American documentary film directed by Sara Driver. It tells the story about Jean-Michel Basquiat and the New York City art scene in the late 1970s. The film had its premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2017. It was released in the United States on May 11, 2018.
The Times Square Show was an influential collaborative, self-curated, and self-generated art exhibition held by New York artists' group Colab in Times Square in a shuttered massage parlor at 201 W. 41st and 7th Avenue during the entire month of June in 1980. The Times Square Show was largely inspired by the more radical Colab show The Real Estate Show, but unlike it, was open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in what was then a Times Square full of porno theaters, peep shows, and red light establishments. In addition to experimental painting and sculpture, the exhibition incorporated music, fashion, and an ambitious program of performance and video. For many artists the exhibition served as a forum for the exchange of ideas, a testing-ground for social-directed figurative work in progress, and a catalyst for exploring new political-artistic directions.
Andy Mouse is a series of silkscreen prints created by American artist Keith Haring in 1986. The character Andy Mouse is a fusion between Disney's Mickey Mouse and Andy Warhol. The series consists of four silkscreen prints on wove paper, all signed and dated in pencil by Haring and Warhol.
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