Greenwich Village

We have spent a lot of time thus far looking at the influential figures in the lives of many of the more prominent people within various movements or institutions. Banes allows us one of the more extensive insights into Greenwich Village and the people, places, and things that made the Village unique not only visually but in its offerings as well.

As with Columbia University and the Beat movement, within Greenwich Village, movements including the Happenings and the Fluxes evolved out of classroom experiences attributable to the teachers John Cage, Robert Dunn, etc. "In every discipline, John Cage was the most influential father figure to this generation of artists. The roster of students and visitors in his experimental music composition classes at the New School for Social Research is a large cross section of those who would soon become Happenings-makers, Fluxes performers, and new music composers, as well as filmmakers, painters, and poets."

In addition individuals like Mekas, Ellen Stewart, and Joe Cino although not certified in their respective fields were instrumental in the lives of many upcoming actors, playwrights, dancers, etc. All cared for their young aspiring performers like parental units, feeding them, protecting them, and more importantly giving them a home away from home.

This reminded me of Trilling and Van Doren in our study of the Beats and their "elder statesmen". The above notion of a home away from home is what made the various places the youth migrated to within the Village a "Great Good Place." They were able to chose their family members and subsequently incorporate work and play into one sphere.

Choosing was a crucial option available to the youth, it allowed them to do things according to their own specific times, thoughts, agenda, etc.., This is what the times were all about-- a questioning of assumptions in society, particularly because of disbelief in government and politics, arenas where there was no truth.

The generation searched for answers in societal institutions, within films, dance, poetry and in bars, cafes, coffeehouses, where ideas on family and community were being "remodeled and regained".

Lynette Erbe

My interest in Greenwich Village is its sense of identity and community. I'd like to know what the artists/residents of the Village thought about themselves and their relationship with NYC.

The other communities (blacks, Italians, etc) weren't really the focus of my thoughts. Again, I'm really not familiar with New York so I wasn't sure if they were a part of the village or not.

Basically, I'm looking at Banes' idea of a heterotopia - a community that both interacts with and rebels from mainstream society. Greenwich Village, at least initially, appears to be its own little society. And in a huge city like New York, I find that fascinating.

Meredith Walker

"Whether I was coming back from Spanish Harlem or Indianapolis, Greenwich Village seemed like home. From the first time I saw it, as a student at Columbia, I was drawn to the place, entranced by it." - Dan Wakefield's personal recollections of the Village.

"There's a family feeling to the recollections of other villagers of my time, a sense of closeness with neighbors and friends and even business people that comes from the feeling you are part of a common enterprise, a shared vision of the value of art and literature, of music and drama, of individuality and personal freedom." ...that's why the original bohemians came, because it was more like home." - Wakefield's account of others (who lived within the Village) views of the Village.

Lynette Erbe

Why did people flock to the Village? For many reasons. First, Greenwich Village was a denizen of pop culture, the obscene, the absurd, the unusual. If one was feeling the constraints of the conformist culture of the fifties, he or she might have visualized the Village as a sort of escape from the "normal" life, a place to be free. It seems as if many of the rejected ideas and expressions during the era were very much accepted in Greenwich Village. Not only were they accepted, but they were seen as "normal" there. Dance, poetry, writing, even bar-crawling, was seen as an art form, and to the Villagers, it was life. Vibrant, exuding culture from every crevice, this was the Village.

Francine Jaffe

During the 1960's, Greenwich Village served as a gathering place for artists from a variety of disciplines. They came to the Village because they either found traditional small-town life unsatisfying, or they were misunderstood by conventional society. These artists used their art, whether music, theater, dance or painting, to make political and social statements. In the Village they set up a community where their art could be expressed and performed without the persecution of mainstream society. They were each other's promoters, audiences, and critics.

But, was Greenwich Village really the Great Good Place it seemed to be? My answer would be "No." Despite the fact that the Village was a gathering place for the misunderstood members of the society, its inhabitants excluded the local population. The artists of the village also did not separate their home, work, and fun, a principal element of the Great Good Place. As Ray Oldenberg suggested in his book, The Problems of Place in America, society is lacking a third place, one separate from home and work. This third place should bring people from all walks of life together, and not exclude anyone because they are different. It should also be a place where one relaxes from the stresses from the day. For example, the West End Bar, near Columbia, was a gathering place for the entire campus, including the Beats. Once there, students could socialize, drink a few beers, and relax. Although the Village appears exist as mini-great good places, the same artists lived together, worked together, and socialized together.

Sarah Doran

Here's a link on Morningside Heights.

Maryellen Armour

In class we have discussed the communities that artists such as Warhol, Ginsberg and Scorsese come from and spend time in. We have examined the circles they walk in and out of and tried to figure out if there little families are Great Good Places or if they are elitist groups only for black sheep.

Some of us have wondered about the people who were not involved in these artistic movements and who just lived in the village or in the upper west side of New York. It has been hard for us to talk about the way the every day people are affected by these things becasue there is not much literature or many movies made about the people who weren't the stars. Chapter 4 of Zukin puts the culture of Warhol, Ginsberg, and Scorsese in perspective for the rest of the population. The culture that these artists provide their paintings, their poems, and their films bring money to the city in which it resides.

Zukin explains that these forms of high culture draw tourists to a city. They raise property values. They make a city a Greater Good Place. So all of us who do not make films, write poems, paint, dance, or act, are not completely excluded from these cultures. We are able to enjoy what they have to offer and we reep the benefits of the culture they bring to an area.

Anne Walters

Sally Banes, in her book, Greenwich Village 1963, describes the events that took place in the art world in the early sixties as the democratization of the avant-garde. In 1939 Clement Greenberg wrote a piece entitled Avant-Garde and Kitsch. In this piece he defines avant-garde. According to Greenberg the avant-garde is art for arts sake, art that is not for profit, that is a personal expression of an artist. It is art that is detached from society and politics. It is art whose audience needs to be critical, reflective, thinking and educated to appreciate. Greenberg describes Kitsch as commercial. It is mass produced to a mass audience. It is unoriginal because it draws on existing art and society. The motive behind kitsch is money.

Greenberg basically defining what we today call pop art. Banes explains that in the 1960s artists combined folk art, art made by community members for community member, and pop art to make the avant-garde more accessible. Basically what is meant by all this is that artists of the 60s, like Andy Warhol, took pop art and made it in a way that it could be seen critically.

An example of this would be the painting of the Campells soup can. Campells soup was mass produced, it was accessible to all audiences the label can be considered pop art. Warhol took this can and put it on a canvas. He made people look at it critically and analytically. He and his entourage were involved in society, yet there art was for arts sake. The art was mass produced yet it was a reflection of the artists experience. These artists blended the avant-garde with kitsch to create a new accessible and democratic avant-garde.

Anne Walters

I enjoyed reading the Banes chapter. I would also like to explore another author that she mentioned in the text,Ronald Sukenick and his book on the literary scene in GV from 1948 to 1986. This lights my interest because in the search for a great good place, the first place I look to is a bar or coffeehouse, or jazz/music club. I also have a great interest in poetry and therefore would like to learn more about a culture that mixed the social atmosphere of a coffeehouse/club/bar with the literary styles of poetry. the first chapter interested me also because because the Village was a totally diferent culture from the beginning. Here you find people that don't really want the mainstream with it's traffic, suit and tie jobs, industry, and capitalization. They want to explore something else, art, themselves, freedom. It seem a culture that focuses on human aspect of life, not the corporated american machine. Anyway, the book will make for good reading throughout the semester.

Joe Ward

In the first chapter of her book, Sally Banes discusses the sense of community that is sound in the village. She cites David Boroff who explains that the village has the atmosphere of a neighborhood that one might find in a small town, yet people are still able to maintain the autonomy that a big city can provide.

I think that the image in this photograph explains this concept. Something about the way the buildings are not as tall as they are in Times Square gives the busy street a homey feel to it. It doesn't feel like a huge city. It doesn't really look like one either. A friend of mine askes me where this picture was taken and when I said New York City he didn't believe me. "New York is much more scary than this" he said.

People are out on the streets going in and out of shops or just taking an afternoon stroll. This creates an ambiance that makes everyone feel safe and at home. On the other hand you still are in New York andyou are in an area where pretty much anything goes. So no matter what yo are doing or wearing chances are the person next to you doesn't care becasue they have there own things to worry about. It seems like a true heterotopia (at least on the surface).

Anne Walters

In her book Sally Banes discusses Washington Square park in the chapter entitled "Another Space". In this section she quotes Fred McDarrah from his 1963 guidebook, Greenwich Village. McDarrah describes the gathering place. "On foot, on bicycles, on motor scooters and taxis, in baby carriages or sight seeing buses, whatever conveyance carries them, everyone gathers here, cats and babies, artists and intellectuals, Bankers and beatnicks, Zen buddhists and swamis, shoe clerks and writers. . . The fountain that is the heart of the Village for it is here on a summer Sunday that Villagers gather to pick banjos, shoot photographs, sunbathe, spin yo-yos, twirl lassos, protest non-violently, write poetry, shoot off beat movies, meet friends or just plain talk. All that it is missing is a community bulletin board."

Is this yet another example of a great good place? I think so. I was not so lucky to be in the park taking pictures on a summer Sunday, but on a fall Saturday my observations were quite similar. Here there is a real sense of community. From all the subcultures that we have explored such as the Beats and Warhols crew to the average everday passerby.

Anne Walters

Where now the tide of traffic beats,
There was a maze of crooked streets; the noisy waves of enterprise,
Swift-hurrying to their destinies,
Swept past this island paradise:
Here life went to a gentler place,
And dreams and dreamers found a place.

-Floyd Dell