Life as Art

The experiences of Club 57's director Stanley Strychacki, as recorded here, briefly describe many of the artworks and performances that were shown and created therein. But this is not the overriding purpose of the book. Works by the more renowned artists, such as Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, are more fully explicated in art history books and museum and gallery catalogues. But here, these and less celebrated works are interwoven with the circumstances of the club-how it came to be, how the participants interacted, and how the things that happened were able to happen. The last of these holds the biggest key. How was it that what appeared to be a punk rock club, filled with visually outrageous, verbally incitive and overtly sexually experimental young people, was allowed to operate for five years in the basement of a church And how did the members come up with night after night of performances, art shows, film festivals, group activities and extensively casted productions - a new program nearly every night, and all this without any of the government-sponsored funding that is so bitterly and publicly fought over today. Leonard Abrams