In mid-twentieth-century New York, on an obscure little street on the tip of Manhattan, a group of artists changed American art forever.
In this exquisite biography, art historian and critic Prudence Peiffer captures a defining moment in American art: when Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Delphine Seyrig, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman lived and worked together in creative community and transformed the art world.
In the 1950s and 60s, Coenties Slip—an obscure little street at the lower tip of Manhattan overlooking the East River—was home to a group of extraordinary, then-struggling artists: Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Delphine Seyrig, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. For just over a decade, this cobblestone street of dilapidated warehouses would serve as the unlikely site of eclectic and influential works of art and spark a singular moment of community and creativity.
In her riveting new group biography, THE SLIP: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever (Harper, $35.00; Hardcover; ISBN 10: 0063097206; on-sale: August 1, 2023), art historian and critic Prudence Peiffer pays homage to the crucial street that inspired this extraordinary group of artists and captures a singular moment of time and place that changed the course of American art.
As friends and inspirations to one another, these artists created a unique community for unbridled creative expression and experimentation. It was on the Slip that Ellsworth Kelly honed his unique style of hard-edge, minimalism, and Color Field painting; his once-lover Robert Indiana changed his surname from “Clark” to “Indiana”—and thus came into his own being as an artist—and developed sculptures from scavenged materials and paintings about the literary and maritime history of the neighborhood; James Rosenquist explored the role of advertising and consumer culture in art and society; painter Jack Youngerman and actress Delphine Seyrig lived and worked with their infant baby, after following Kelly from Paris to forge their own artistic visions; and Agnes Martin and Lenore Tawney—transplants from New Mexico and Chicago respectively—made singular impressions on the art world with abstract paintings (Martin) and fiber arts (Tawney).
In telling the story of these artists, Peiffer also captures a singular moment of New York City history. Despite Coenties Slip’s obscurity, the entire history of Manhattan was inscribed into its cobblestones—one of the first streets and central markets of the new colony, built by enslaved people, with revolutionary meetings at the tavern just down Pearl Street; named by Herman Melville in Moby Dick and site of the boom and bust of the city’s maritime industry; and, in the artist’s own time, a development battleground for Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. THE SLIP’s history is entwined with that of the artists and their art—radical and varied work that was made from the wreckage of the city’s many former lives.
THE SLIP is a not only a highly ambitious historical account of New York in the mid-twentieth century and a biography of seven major artists at a pivotal time, but it shows us the profound role of place in creativity: how we are shaped by our environment, and how in turn it shapes our work.
Above all, for the first time ever, THE SLIP chronicles a breakthrough moment in American art and offers us an inspiring model for future creative communities.
Prudence Peiffer is an art historian, writer, and editor, specializing in modern and contemporary art. She is Managing Editor of the Creative Team at MoMA, New York. She received her PhD from Harvard University. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University, she was a SeniorEditor at Artforum magazine from 2012-2017, and Digital Content Director at David Zwirner in 2018.
Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Artforum, and Bookforum, among other publications.
THE ARTISTS FEATURED IN PRUDENCE PEIFFER’S THE SLIP
Robert Indiana was an American artist whose work drew inspiration from signs, billboards, and commercial logos. He is best known for his series of LOVE paintings, which became an iconic emblem of the Pop movement: MoMA’s annual Christmas card and an American postage stamp. He and Ellsworth Kelly were lovers for a time when they lived on the Slip.
Ellsworth Kelly was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting, and minimalism, often employing bright colors. He served in the army during WWII, and studied art in Paris on the G.I. Bill, yet his own unique style came to fruition during his time on the Slip.
Born on a farm in rural Saskatchewan, Canada, Agnes Martin immigrated to the United States in 1932 in the hopes of becoming a teacher, and then moved to Taos, New Mexico. While still in NM, her abstract paintings attracted the attention of renowned New York gallerist Betty Parsons (gallerist to most of the artists on the Slip) who convinced her to join her roster and move to New York in 1957, where she lived on the Slip.
James Rosenquist was an American artist and one of the main proponents of the Pop art movement who was profoundly influenced by his work as a commercial, billboard artist. In his large pieces, including President Elect featuring an image of John F. Kennedy, and created while living on the Slip, he explored the role of advertising and consumer culture in art and society.
Delphine Seyrig was a Lebanese-born French actress, activist, and film director. She came to prominence in Alain Resnais's 1961 film “Last Year at Marienbad,” and later acted in films by Francois Truffaut, Luis Buñuel, Marguerite Duras, Fred Zinneman, and Chantal Akerman. She was married to artist Jack Youngerman whom she met in Paris and then moved to NYC with him and their infant son Duncan to live and work on the Slip.
Lenore Tawney was an American artist known for her groundbreaking work in fiber arts (her experimentation with open-warp techniques took weaving to an entirely new level), as well as for her drawings, collages, and assemblages. She moved to NY from Chicago at the age of fifty, a widow who never remarried, and lived in a series of lofts, artworks in their own right, in the South Street Seaport area where she interacted with the rest of the Slip artists.
Artist Jack Youngerman, known for his large, exuberant sculptures and paintings, grew up poor in Kentucky, and then studied art on the G.I. Bill in Paris where he met American artist Ellsworth Kelly. The two of them soaked in all the art, architecture, design, and history they could before moving back to the States to forge their own artistic visions. Jack met Delphine Seyrig in Paris, and they followed Kelly a few years after to live and work on the Slip.