Cheap Rents... and de Kooning

Cheap Rents... and de Kooning revisits the New York downtown art scene between 1957 and 1963, when the Tenth street galleries were the center of the art world and inexpensive lofts were available. John Cohen took a series of the artist's haunts-among them the Cedar Tavern, the Club and the Tanager Gallery-and created a definitive photographic impression of a hell-bent, headstrong time. De Kooning's studio was in the middle of the bloc. Abstract Expressionists, Pop Artists, Performance Art and the Happenings were all happening there along with the Beat Generation. It was the hatchery of new ideas and avant-garde thinking in downtown Manhattan.