Graffiti, punk rock posters featured in Warhol exhibit

“The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974-84”

Various Artists

Through September 3… “The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974-84”

Various Artists

Through September 3

The Warhol

117 Sandusky St.

The North Shore

(412) 237-8300

Even though Andy Warhol’s fame peaked in the ’60s and he had gained success and respect among the artistic community, a walk through The Warhol’s exhibit featuring counter-culture artists’ work from the late ’70s and ’80s proves his influence filtered down.

“The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974-84” is a comprehensive collection of both art and artifacts of a time when most artists were not-for-profit and living in run-down lofts in SoHo and Lower East Side apartment buildings.

A traveling exhibit from Grey Art Gallery in New York City, “Downtown Show” provides a retrospective of a time when the avant-garde and postmodern artistic expression that had been kept underground or within elite circles began to bloom on the face of the city.

The exhibition is broken up into eight sections, and that is exactly where it starts.

“Interventions” is an introduction that looks at how artists began to use the outdoor space of the city as their art gallery.

Sculptor Scott Burton cast a discarded Queen Anne chair in bronze and displayed it on the sidewalk, while photographer David Wojnarowicz had a friend wear a mask of French poet Arthur Rimbaud while wandering the streets.

Clearly this is work that challenged the contemporary notions of art. It’s for that reason that John Smith, assistant director for collections and research at The Warhol, considered “Downtown Show” to be a great suit for the museum.

“The Warhol is the perfect venue for this remarkable exhibition because the show is permeated by Andy Warhol’s spirit and influence,” Smith said.

The second section, “Broken Stories,” explores how artists of various mediums began to manipulate the way receive narrative through art.

It’s here we see the works of Richard Prince — who built controversy by photographing photographs as their own art — and behind the scene stills of Jim Jarmusch on the sets of his films, “Permanent Vacation” and “Stranger than Paradise.”

“De-signs” contains some of the most interesting and Warhol-esque works in the showcase.

By warping iconic and commercial signs — these artworks capture a certain familiarity of the everyday in unconventional slogans and symbols – artists found a way to make a very public statement that easily attracted attention.

The category covers everything from graffiti to punk rock posters from bands such as Talking Heads, Television, Richard Hell and The Ramones.

The more interesting works are by those of Matt Mullican and Jenny Holzer.

Mullican’s “Untitled/Signs” is a series of 18 iconic signs using simple symbols to convey higher concepts such as mathematics, heaven and fate. One of the more cerebral pieces of the show, these signs raise an awareness of how simple it is to identify these concepts with signs, yet how complicated the ideas behind them can be.

Likewise, Holzer’s signs take the appearance of conventional road signs but presents mini-narratives that carry an ambiguous and unsettling tone.

One reads, “It takes awhile before you can step over inert bodies and go ahead with what you were trying to do.”

“Salon de Refuse” is a tribute to bad tastes in art. From using Elephant feces as sculpture to the simple acceptance of the kitsch and cliche in art, this section shows an embrace of the low-brow.

“Body Politics” explores the bold and in-your-face approach artists started to take toward sexuality and gender in the late ’70s.

In another area that challenges the limitations of art, “Sublime Time” focuses on meditation and the body as a piece of performance art.

Tehching Hsieh’s “One Year Performance (Time Piece)” is simply a record of the artist punching a time clock every hour of every day for one year. The endurance and systems of the body become a way for the artists to express himself.

There is also a section dedicated to portraits of many of the famous faces of the New York art scene during the time, including Philip Glass and Richard Prince.

The last section, “Mock Shop,” is an exploration into the alternative ways that artists spread their work. This includes mass-produced work, mail art and art made specifically for consumption.

Put together, “Downtown Show” is as much a museum as it is an art exhibit. With dozens of books, posters and pictures from the times, the exhibit celebrates a time when art was a free-for-all in America’s artistic epicenter.