Holly Solomon Gallery opened in New York City in 1975 at 392 West Broadway in Soho, Manhattan. [1] Started by Holly Solomon - aspiring actress, style-icon, and collector - and her husband Horace Solomon, the gallery was initially known for launching major art careers and nurturing the artistic movement known as Pattern and Decoration, which was a reaction to the austerities of Minimal art. [2] [3]
In 1969, Solomon opened the 98 Greene St. Loft. The south of Houston noncommercial exhibition space, rented for $158 per month, hosted poetry readings, performances, musical events and exhibitions by artists and writers such as Ted Barrigan, Laurie Anderson, Gordon Matta-Clark, Donna Dennis, Robert Kushner, George Schneeman, and others. The Loft operated for three years. [1] [3]
The Holly Solomon Gallery represented artists such as Judy Pfaff, Joan Mitchell, Cora Cohen, Gordon Matta-Clark, Laurie Anderson, Robert Kushner, Melissa Miller, Rob Wynne, Nam June Paik, and William Wegman. In 1983, the gallery moved uptown to 724 Fifth Ave at 57th, but then moved again in the early 1990s back downtown to SoHo at 172 Mercer Street following Holly's divorce from Horace. [1] Solomon was also a proponent of the Pattern and Decoration art movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s and related tendencies that broke with the more austere aspects of Post-Minimalism and Conceptual Art. [4] Many of the artists featured in her gallery were involved in what is also known as the P and D movement, including Miriam Schapiro, Izhar Patkin, Valerie Jaudon, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Kim MacConnel and Ned Smyth. [5]
After the Mercer Street gallery closed in 1999 due to a dispute with the building's landlord, [1] Holly Solomon continued to deal in art from the Chelsea Hotel until her death in 2002. [2]
In 2014, the Gallery was celebrated in an exhibition titled Hooray for Hollywood!, co-curated by Mixed Greens’ Heather Bhandari and Steven Sergiovanni (a former director of Holly Solomon Gallery), and Pavel Zoubok, whose program of contemporary collage and mixed-media was influenced by Solomon’s example. [3]
Holly Solomon Gallery (1977). Holly Solomon Gallery, the first two years. New York: The Gallery.
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary avant-garde performance and experimental art institution located at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. As the organization undergoes a multi-year renovation it is currently sited at a satellite loft space in the West Village located at 163B Bank Street, where exhibitions and performances are regularly held. It was founded in Greenwich Village in 1971 by Steina and Woody Vasulka, who were frustrated at the lack of an outlet for video art. The space takes its name from the original location, the kitchen of the Mercer Arts Center which was the only available place for the artists to screen their video pieces. Although first intended as a location for the exhibition of video art, The Kitchen soon expanded its mission to include other forms of art and performance. In 1974, The Kitchen relocated to a building at the corner of Wooster and Broome Streets in SoHo, and incorporated as a not-for-profit arts organization. In 1987 it moved to its current location.
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Pattern and Decoration was a United States art movement from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. The movement has sometimes been referred to as "P&D" or as The New Decorativeness. The movement was championed by the gallery owner Holly Solomon. The movement was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Hudson River Museum in 2008.
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Holly Solomon (1934–2002) was an American collector of contemporary art and founder of the Holly Solomon Gallery in New York City in 1975. Her SoHo, Manhattan gallery was initially known for nurturing the artistic movement known as Pattern and Decoration, which was a reaction to the austerities of Minimal art. She was the subject of an early portrait by Andy Warhol that made her a Pop Art icon, of sorts, as well as the subject of portraits by Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg. Holly and Horace Solomon made a lasting contribution to the work of Gordon Matta-Clark when they provided the site for Matta-Clark's project Splitting, a suburban home in Englewood, New Jersey.
Cynthia Marie "Tina" Girouard was an American video and performance artist best known for her work and involvement in the SoHo art scene of the 1960s and early 1970s.
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