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Lifestyle, New York

That 80s Downtown Spirit

Published on 10 minutes read
Words by David Michon, Imagery by Georgia Morrison
"Downtown New York was a crucible of rapid experimentation where the roots of today’s décor tendencies were, in some significant part, forged."

Allow us to present you with an argument that Downtown in New York in the 1980s was a true pinnacle of American design culture. The version of it that is most familiar — Basquiat, Haring, Warhol, etc. — is, gloriously, just the cherry on top.

In décor and ‘design’ terms, the most spectacular times are not ones of honed and committed aesthetic — much as modernism of the mid-century endures (relentlessly), for example — but times of deliciously mixed, clashing, alchemistic cacophony. It’s fast, it’s radical, it’s imperfect, it’s the collective “us” dropping our rules and trying to work out something new. And isn’t that the best way a life can be led? (Yes!) It is certainly, we posit, the very best way to approach matters of the physical environment and so-called ‘taste’. 

We return now to New York of the 1980s, when the city was pumped full indulgent power-hungry Yuppies, who venn diagram with a radical arts and design scene both (a) physically (we shall focus on Downtown, one such pocket), and (b) spiritually, in a driving forward motion towards... right now. 

Downtown New York was a crucible of rapid experimentation where the roots of today’s décor tendencies were, in some significant part, forged. It was a scene in which designers, artists, restaurateurs, shopkeepers pummelled formality, thumbed their noses at the establishment (even as they became a part of it), and operated “with style, not ‘in a style’”. (We shall attribute this crucial quote momentarily.)

The foundations of 1980s Downtown were, of course, laid in the decades before — in the messy-sexy Warhol Factory (really in Midtown, just barely) and the advent of the artist as Celebrity; the ever-seductive coming-of-age of the Soho loft as Aspirational Domestic Form; the minimalism of Donald Judd; the experimental wonder of Laurie Anderson. 

Rules were Uptown, ideas were Downtown. (Which would you rather?)

May we present a brief starting point of somewhat arbitrary selection of New York Downtown-ery to explain why, perhaps, we should really think of it as one of America’s greatest cultural eras. (One that thrived, in must be noted, despite a plague and crushing conservatism.)

Some key points:

THE HEYDAY OF “ART ET INDUSTRIE” GALLERY

Founded in 1977 by Rick Kaufman and Tracy Rust, one shouldn’t let the French fool you, Art et Industrie was a beating heart of American “art furniture” — and part of it was simply that they were highly skilled at getting their artists press attention. In any case, such objects remain debated today, as in: what are they? Sculpture? I mean, you can sit on them — so they are furniture. But they’re worth too much, they are too wacky, so they are art. The “Art Furniture” answer is usually: what does it matter?

But it was here, at Art et Industrie that décor was institutionally introduced to New York as whatever-the-hell-you-wanted-it-to-be – the gallery was a kind of formal center to a movement of artists such as Michele Oka Doner, Carmen Spera, Terence Main, and Richard Snyder, who didn’t give a damn about making ‘commercial’ furniture (or commercial art). They didn’t even really care about function. It was the anti-modern, but not in a “post-” way — it was about a certain spiritual liberation. 

And, anyway, it is Rick from whom we received the enlightening concept of life “with style, not in a style,” as he would explain the mission of his gallery. Very crucial reframing — one to keep in mind, always!

AD HOC HOUSEWARES (later, AD HOC SOFTWARES)

The bible was published in 1978 — at least the bible of the newly-formalized Industrial décor style. This was Joan Kron and Suzanne Slesin’s “High-Tech: The Industrial Style and Source Book for the Home”. And, it had its Vatican; its source of wisdom: Ad Hoc, a shop that had opened in 1977 and subsequently moved Downtown in the early 1980s. They arrived in Soho when (it’s hard to imagine) it was really not a place for ‘shopping’, and its founders Judith Kress (eventually Judith Kress Auchincloss) and Julia McFarlane found the gumption to make a discernible style out of medical and restaurant supply goods, wire shelving, and much more of that ilk. The type of things that, in watered-down form, would find their way into Bloomingdale’s.

Kron is quoted as saying, of the time: “It was a time when for design purists, finding a plain black shower curtain was nirvana. Ad Hoc was the only place to find these things.” (A kind of discovery experience that doesn’t really exist anymore.) 

As the style is described in High-Tech’s introduction, it occurs as movers’ pads replace velvet as upholstery, steel warehouse shelving finds its way into living rooms, and for bathrooms, it was a hospital faucet that added “cachet” not gold-plated swans. (The same, of course, was happening sartorial: workwear!)

One note we must make, of course, because we seem so divorced from the notion of subculture today, is that industrial objects, in this context, were assigned with “pseudoliberating powers”, as Kron and Slesin wrote. The style was (at its very start, at least) an anti-consumerist moral protest — remember those? To repurpose, to “rebaptize” objects for domestic use was to made-do but also make-new. It’s not cute, like “upcycling”, it’s empowering and political. 

THE INTERIORS OF JOE D’URSO and his work for KNOLL

One man featured in “High-Tech” is Joseph Paul D’Urso, a.k.a. Joe D’Urso, who really did make some spectacular interiors work — both furniture and also very handsome New York apartments. He did really nail the industrial vibe, for one, which allegedly he got into via an appreciation for the 19th-century architecture of northern England. But as with anyone that is particularly skilled at looking forward (and side-to-side) instead of just navel-gazing, D’Urso does that thing where he makes up his own language. See, for example, the loft he did for the journalist Peter Carlsen — minimal, but also not austere; mixing some different energies (i.e. Tizio lamp, plus curvy wooden rocking chair); gallery-white-vast walls but no pretentious “loft-scale” art (or any art at all, for that matter). 

D’Urso is responsible for the 1980 “Low Table” for Knoll — a sort of corporate-energy on-wheels coffee table that now is extremely commonplace; and also the 1981 model 6048T table (also Knoll), that is glass-stainless steel and very glam-yuppy. This is what we call “range”, folks! 

Yet, let us head Downtown, and though we’re leaping a little back in time to 1974, it’s got a very 1980s edge to it — because we’re in the Washington Square home of Larry Kramer (designed, of course, by D’Urso). Kramer is a hero, as probably the foremost AIDS activist in the United States, and Downtown New York in the 1980s was a front line.

Kramer’s apartment was so much of what the Downtown spirit was and then would be throughout the decade. It was kind of sexy-impolite; unbound (note: a kind of hammock-swing chaise); and, it embodied a certain defiant bachelordom (that was not exclusive to male bachelors, it must be said) — very much not an apartment for a suburban nuclear family.

DONALD JUDD

Buying 101 Spring Street in 1968 as his home and studio, Donald Judd established a kind of cultural center for Minimalism that endures today — which he probably aspired it to be, but didn’t yet know that was for sure. Despite it all — the wild-graffitied, extravagant-experimental tendencies of 1980s Downtown — he persisted with his ‘barely’ approach. It was the Basquiat-Haring-Art et Industie-Ad Hoc era, and Judd is the most notable counterpoint. Not to any sort of ‘maximalism’, but to a churning chaos. The vibe of stability in Judd’s work is perhaps why it has almost never fallen out of favor. 

And, we must make clear, the 1980s was his main Furniture Period. 

His is a furniture of a kind of DIY-simplicity — woods, plywoods, metals cut in squares and rectangles (rarely is there a slope, never a scoop) that it feels ‘basic’. Somehow, though, those shapes are arranged in such a way that you’re like “Oh, okay — new!” But then just as they feel New, they also feel like a kind of “essence of”. Judd is really the guy (or one of the most important ones) who created a modern furniture baseline, from which so, so, so many designers have launched their own explorations. (Sometimes the Judd reference is altogether too obvious — and, famously, the Judd Foundation is pretty litigious.)

To his credit, he did have some ‘luminary’ attributes — it wasn’t just a fluke. In 1983 he wrote: “Considerations of place, climate, materials, available labor and technology, cost, and certainly usefulness and function are informative delights and not burdens.” Hardly the main thrust of 1980s ‘creativity’ when excess and expressiveness was en vogue, but these resonate (or should) today.

STUDIO MORSA SOHO LOFT

Well, to speak of minimalism, might we explore one other example: the Soho loft of Antonio Morello and Donato Savoie — the duo behind Studio MORSA, who today describe their work as feeling “like a cool and refreshing breeze”. And certainly in the case of this parachute silk sail, that makes sense.

Yet, this very unusual means of window-covering doesn’t feel like it’s pulled from the reference of a yacht, say. Instead, it has a very drop-sheet aesthetic. And, with the ‘loft’ as a form very much associated with ‘artist’, it becomes somewhat interesting to analyze this MORSA morsel: the overscale, high design version of the ad hoc, out-of-necessity loft life of the derelict painter. This makes it kind of non-Juddian minimalism – Judd, who seemed to like of take an essence of ‘as nothing as possible’, and build up just a teeny bit. The MORSA minimalism is the opposite: taking the complex, the socially-layered, an avant-garde messiness, and then distilling it.

So, take this as a counterpoint to the counterpoint. Again, the excited times, aesthetically, are ones where there’s no single take on things! The Downtown scene wasn’t exploring just ‘a’ theme, it was exploring all the themes. Even minimalism found its own discordances!

THE ODEON

And, what would any good review of anything be if there isn’t something actionable — which, in this case, is a place one can (re)visit: The Odeon, a Downtown eatery that has retained its sense of authority since opening in 1980.

Today, it is firmly The Establishment — a wonderfully Art Deco-ish elegant dining room where we once shared lunch with the daughter of Babe Paley, who was at the time New York City’s chief urban planner. Just as a sense of the energy, for those who are not familiar: excellent ambient lighting. 

In any case, every cultural scene — no matter how wildly diverse and kind of incohesive — needs a place to mingle and flirt. And, among the best places Downtown for this kind of super-socializing was here. In contrast to the grit and danger of the East Village, Tribeca gave us The Odeon, a gesture to European sophistication conceived by its restaurateurs while on vacation in Paris. 

Before there were urban planners here, there was Basquiat, Haring, De Niro, Belushi — and Warhol, whose Interview magazine had credit at The Odeon, in trade for advertising. It was power, but also façade — which is totally great, sometimes. The Odeon was, said Richard Serra, the artist, “a place where celebrities from uptown wanted to slum with artists downtown.” (Serra also says: “O.K., look. Possibly I was thrown out of the Odeon once in my life. But so what?”)

David Michon is the author of FOR SCALE, a weekly newsletter on the supreme potential of domestic interiors. He is an independent brand consultant and writer, the former editor-in-chief of UK design magazine Icon, and former managing editor of Monocle magazine.

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