The 8th Street Club | |
| Abbreviation | The Club |
|---|---|
| Named after | The NYC location of its meetings |
| Predecessor | Inspired by French salons and the camaraderie and cross-influences of artists who had participated in the Federal Art Project |
| Successor | The 23rd Street Workshop Club |
| Formation | 1949 |
| Founder | Philip Pavia |
| Founded at | New York City |
| Dissolved | ca. 1970 |
| Type | Arts, culture and humanities club |
| Purpose | To provide an organized contemporary fine arts forum for discussion, debate, lecture and performance |
Membership | Mainly painters and sculptors, but also dancers, poets, musicians and writers, including art critics, art historians and other kinds of cultural thinkers |
The Club (1949–1957 and 1959–1970) has been called "a schoolhouse of sorts ... as well as a theater, gallery space, and a dancehall...."[1] Created by abstract expressionist sculptor Philip Pavia, The Club grew out of the informal gatherings among dozens of painters and sculptors who all had art studios in Lower Manhattan between 8th and 12th streets and First and Sixth Avenues during the late 1940s and early 1950s.[2] Membership included many of New York's most important mid-century artists and thinkers, predominantly painters and sculptors like Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Isamu Noguchi, John Ferren, and Robert Motherwell, as well as nearly all the artists later called the New York School. But other celebrated artists, cultural figures and major 20th-century thinkers attended meetings, including philosopher Joseph Campbell, composer John Cage and political theorist Hannah Arendt.[3] Structured to facilitate the growth and dissemination of ideas about art by artists for artists, especially abstract expressionist art,[2] The Club lent New York's art scene the vitality and international influence Paris had long monopolized, and U.S. artists had long craved.[4][5][6]
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