Trash Culture and the Avant-Garde: The Outrageous Art Scene of Area Nightclub, NY in the 1980s.

By Niamh Finlay

Sweating, shoving, shouting, smelling of spilled beer and spew, prizing feet from sticky floors… a quintessential night out is not without its imperfections, and if anything, these add to the experience. Everyone is sweaty, everyone is shouting, we are all free to go wild and move as we like. In this bustling atmosphere you wouldn’t expect to come across eminent artists putting on gallery-quality displays. This article explores exactly this, the artistic culture and innovations of the short-lived nightclub Area (1983-1987) particularly through the featured works of Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.

Art installation at Area Nightclub during their ‘Food’ theme, Kenny Baird stands in a pool imitating alphabet soup (created by Mark Garbarino, 1984)  © AREA:1983-1987.  https://juicestore.com/blogs/editorial/the-impermanent-spectacle-nyc-s-area-nightclub-1983-1987

We all know the name Warhol, we think of soup cans and Marylin Monroe, but we don’t often think about the underground artistic experimentation of Warhol’s social circles. Whilst the Club Kids and Party scene of New York were already influencing popular culture generally, Area had a specific remit that allowed for extreme creative freedom and revitalisation every six weeks, an approach inspired by Zurich’s 1916 Dadaist club Cabaret Voltaire. Area set a precedent for total transformation – the 12,500 square foot space being completely renovated every 6 weeks to fit a new theme with a budget sometimes reaching $60,000. Total interior destruction and resurrection took place in only four days, nicknamed a “change” by owners Darius Azuri, Shaun Hausman and Christopher and Eric Goode. Being open for only four years allowed for twenty-five different themes to be covered, including food, science fiction, suburbia, confinement, war, natural history, and sport. These transformations made the club a piece of performance, with everyone inside acting as participant, creating an audience desperate to be shocked next. Installations could include anything from sets, dioramas, machinery, taxidermy, live animals, tableaux vivants or performers, establishing an entirely immersive space for exhibition.

The ‘Art’ theme, in May 1985, commissioned installations by Warhol, Haring, Basquiat and others, drawing in celebrities, politicians, artists, and ravers alike. Huge crowds attended nightclubs like Area, Studio 54, the Palladium and Mudd club because of the buzz created by the artistic presence in the space, as well as the promise of an unforgettable night out. Area’s owners would receive death threats from those turned away from the door, celebrities famously having to queue alongside the public. Paul G Roberts, Founder of the Fashion Industry Broadcast, described his experience:

“It was almost like everyone was world famous. And then there were people like me. Within a 10 meter radius near the bar there would be Andy Warhol talking about his new art installation Invisible Sculpture, next to Graffiti artist Keith Haring, Billy Idol, Madonna, Bianca Jagger. Everyone who was anyone at the time was there, and they were all knee deep in mischief. There will never be another club to rival Area. It was a blast…”

Andy Warhol, Invisible Sculpture, mixed media, 1985 [written], exhibited in 1985 during the ‘Art’ theme at Area nightclub. CoartMag Photo Credit: Eric and Jennifer Goode. https://fashionindustrybroadcast.com/2019/12/22/inside-area-nightclub-the-80s-club-that-housed-the-imagineers-of-partying/

Andy Warhol, Untitled [Portraits of club goers taken in the bathroom at Area nightclub], September 24, 1984 , gelatin silver prints, Contact Sheets. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. https://exhibits.stanford.edu/warhol/catalog/vh268cg2590

During the 1970s, despite the economic crisis, New York’s nightlife flourished in abandoned neighbourhoods, particularly the Soho and Noho districts. “Trash Culture” refers to any ‘artistic or entertainment expressions considered to be of a low cultural profile but able to stimulate and attract audiences’, the audiences Area was bringing into these dilapidated districts were en masse. Area’s owners staunchly believed that “when we do right, nobody remembers […] when we do wrong no one forgets” and this belief system led to animalistic, sometimes “sick humour” shock tactics that worked. The combination of lowbrow humour, outrageous displays and dilapidated neighbourhoods added to the ‘low cultural profile’ associated with nightclubs. I see, however, the ‘trash culture’ of clubs as an artistic asset. As Andy Warhol remarked, “at the Mudd Club mistakes could pass as experiments.” Mudd Club was a predecessor of Area, also frequented by Haring and Basquiat. Pieces would be temporary, throw-away, forgotten by all except those sober enough to remember them. A temporality at odds to the more controlling art galleries and museums. At Area, Warhol created his contentious piece Invisible Statue, 1985, to show that absence could be art. Bordering on performance this meant that no work was the work, with crowds witnessing an ‘Emperor’s New Clothes-esque’ art piece. The nightclub inspired Warhol to create multiple photography series, including Contact Sheets: sampling the crowd into a collection of intimate snapshots. We see portraits from the Area toilets, featuring Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, Keith Haring and Juan Dubose, Jean Paul Gaultier, David Yarritu as a strongman, alongside other revellers.

Basquiat photographed next to his installation for the ‘Art’ theme at Area Nightclub, New York, 1984. Courtesy of Jennifer Goode. https://www.schirn.de/en/magazine/context/new_york_downtown_and_mudd_club/

Another artist celebrated at Area was Jean-Michel Basquiat. His work shone in the clubs, his style blending street art, neo-expressionism and a reclamation of the 20th century primitivist’s aesthetic. A prominent DJ as well as artist Basquiat had a major presence in Mudd, until its closure in 1983, as well as Area and the Palladium. Writing for Artforum in 1984, Kate Linker asserted that Basquiat was one “of the few painters able to extend the graffiti issue of language from subway to gallery wall […] able to encompass much of the verve and jostling rhythm of the street.” Both Basquiat and Keith Haring began their careers with subway and alley graffiti, forming their recognisable styles. Their practice was a perfect partner for the urban character of a nightclub, with Haring’s instantaneous spray-paints or Basquiat’s violently expressive brushstrokes and skeleton-forms. Both styles capture raw energy and emotion, just like that felt on a dancefloor. Haring commented on socio-political issues with his disarming, dynamic style of cartoon figures, dogs and faces masking sometimes subversive, sexual or darker content. After mingling in nightclub settings Basquiat and Haring worked with famous artists like Warhol, with whom Basquiat created collaborative paintings. Basquiat claimed in an interview with Démosthènes Davvetas that his influence led to Warhol ‘rediscovering his relationship with painting’ after 20 years. The experimental nature of Area encouraged artists to fully investigate their artistic range. Artistic freedom in nightclub spaces was only made possible by the black and queer individuals who formed club culture in the 1960s-70s. We must remember nightclubs like Area as part of a larger narrative of pioneering spaces for artistic creation in an industry so often whitewashed for a more palatable, straight version of history. Area proved an everchanging environment, a raw material for moulding, that endured through creativity of its dedicated patrons. No other nightclub has achieved the total intermingling of art and nightlife so successfully, making roughly $3 million with each “change”, more than any normal art gallery would. Reminding us that a gallery is not the only way to get art to reach the public - or make a profit as an artist.

Volker Hinz. Keith Haring photographed in front of one installation at Area Nightclub, 1985.

Notes

Deitch, Jeffrey, Suzanne Geiss and Julia Gruen; in cooperation with the estate of Keith Haring. KEITH HARING. New York: Rizzoli, 2008.

Hae, Laam. “Dilemmas of the Nightlife Fix: Post-Industrialisation and the Gentrification of Nightlife in New York City.” Urban Studies 48, no. 16. 2011, 3449–65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43082052.

Kenny, Melissa. ‘The Impermanent Spectacle: NYC’s AREA Nightclub (1983-1987)’Juice Magazine, April 17 2018. https://juicestore.com/blogs/editorial/the-impermanent-spectacle-nyc-s-area-nightclub-1983-1987

Kershaw, Miriam. “Postcolonialism and Androgyny: The Performance Art of Grace Jones.” Art Journal 56, no. 4 1997, 19–25. https://doi.org/10.2307/777716.

Kornbluth, Jesse. ‘Inside Area’ New York Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 10.  11th March 1985, 33-41. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JrwBAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA1&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Lisson, Marthe. ‘Basquiat’s World: Downtown NYC and the Mudd Club’ Schirn Mag, 26 Feburary 2018. https://www.schirn.de/en/magazine/context/new_york_downtown_and_mudd_club/

Saggese, Jordana Moore. The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader. Writings, Interviews, Critical Responses. California: University of California Press, 2021.

Tauber, Sami. ‘Inside AREA Nightclub: The 80’s Club That Housed The Imagineers Of Partying’ Fashion Industry Broadcast, December 22 2019. https://fashionindustrybroadcast.com/2019/12/22/inside-area-nightclub-the-80s-club-that-housed-the-imagineers-of-partying/