ART/new york - Introduction
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ART/new york: A Video Magazine On Art
The Early Years, 1981-85 - Introduction
Trailer for Women in Art (1985). Part of the series ART/new york, produced by Paul Tschinkel.
In the early 1980s I worked on ART/new york, a video magazine about contemporary art sold by subscription to schools, museums and libraries. ART/new york was the creation of Paul Tschinkel, a video artist I first knew from 98 Bowery. Initially Paul had worked with another former 98 Bowery tenant, Tom Wolf. When Tom withdrew from the project, I took over the task of interviewing the artists and writing commentary for the tapes.
ART/new york reflected the rise of video technology in the late 1970s. For the first time it was simple and fairly inexpensive to make and distribute movies for small specialized groups. Paul was one of the first to take one of the new portable video cameras into art galleries. Today, up-to-the-minute video coverage of art exhibitions and artists is commonplace on cable television and on the Internet; Paul’s project in the early 1980s marks the beginning of this trend.
It was an exciting five years. Video was still a novelty and few artists turned down the opportunity to be interviewed and have their shows taped. We were a persuasive pair: Paul, with his easy manner and art world connections from his student years in the MFA program at Yale, and I, with a PhD in art history from NYU's Institute of Fine Arts and an active involvement with cutting edge art. The art world was booming and we captured many important moments: breakthrough exhibitions by Julian Schnabel, Cindy Sherman, Jean-Michel Basquiat; the controversy over Richard Serra's "Tilted Arc"; and works by Robert Rauschenberg made in China as part of his ambitious global exchange series.
We were reviewed in the library journal Booklist, and schools and exhibition spaces in the U.S. and abroad subscribed to the series. The United States Information Agency (USIA) commissioned a special tape for one of their exhibitions, and purchased sets of ART/new york programs for U.S. embassies around the world. Fujiko Nakaya distributed translated tapes in Japan. Paul continued with ART/new york after I left in 1985 to become a curator at the Queens Museum, and is still making new tapes (he recently completed ART/new york #71) and marketing the old ones on his website: artnewyork.org
Promotional brochure for the 1982/83 Series III of ART/new york.
All videos and photographs courtesy of Paul Tschinkel and ART/new york.
Videos may be purchased at artnewyork.org
