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Pittsburgh boasts among its varied cultural contributions the birthplace of the world’s most notorious contemporary artist, Andy Warhol. Despite the fact that Warhol fled the city of steel, the spirit of the pop art patriarch persists, most obviously through the Warhol Museum, as well as through a myriad of alternative artistic centers and initiatives. |
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Steel Pulse – Emilie Trice
Pittsburgh boasts among its varied cultural contributions the birthplace of the world’s most notorious contemporary artist, Andy Warhol. Despite the fact that Warhol fled the city of steel, the spirit of the pop art patriarch persists, most obviously through the Warhol Museum, as well as through a myriad of alternative artistic centers and initiatives. Pittsburgh is, without a doubt, a city devoted to football (hence the bizarre wake one year ago of a deceased fan whose family seated him at his own funeral in a recliner wearing his black and gold robe holding a beer and a pack of smokes in front of a television playing looped Steelers highlights); however, because of the low cost of living, devoted artists are also migrating to Pittsburgh, forming communities and fostering creative alliances now more than ever before.
Certainly the most institutional of Pittsburgh’s arts organizations is the Carnegie Museum of Art, home to the International, a world-renowned biennial that brings the best contemporary art stars to Pittsburgh. In 1999, after then-Mayor Giuliani publicly decried the merits of Turner prize winner Chris Ofili’s notorious painting The Holy Virgin Mary, and withdrew funding from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, who had intended to exhibit the work, Ofili was included in the Carnegie International and the museum acquired a painting by him for their permanent collection. Richard Armstrong, the director of the Carnegie explains the atmosphere of the Pittsburgh scene as “sufficiently hostile that you can get something accomplished,” but without succumbing to the kind of conservative censorship prevalent in other cities, including the seemingly liberal New York.
Pittsburgh has always been a hotbed of philanthropy, due to its historical status as a major industrial city. The Carnegies and the Mellons are the two major philanthropic families in Pittsburgh and all have greatly contributed to the arts on an institutional level. The Warhol is affiliated with the Carnegie Museum of Art, and is Pittsburgh’s other “institutional” art establishment with the capacity to mount major exhibitions of historical significance. Through the summer, The Warhol lists among its special exhibitions “The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene,” 1974-84, which debuted in NYC at the Grey Art Gallery and is curated by Carlo McCormick, current senior editor of Paper Magazine. Tom Sokolwski, director of The Warhol, likens the current Pittsburgh scene to the era represented by “The Downtown Show’s” nostalgia, essentially that of New York pre-Giuliani. He says that the energy of New York in these years is beginning to coalesce in Pittsburgh’s emerging arts scene catalyzed by a young, productive community of artists, musicians, performers, monologists, etc. in a receptive, synergized and, above-all, affordable urban environment.
The unification of artists in a period of economic recession is a traditional notion in the canon of art history, and it’s happening in Pittsburgh right now. The Warhol has taken notice and is attempting to provide an arena for projects inspired and even curated by Pittsburgh’s young gallerists and artists. Sokolwski’s enthusiasm for the city’s artistic revival is checked by his concern that The Warhol not be “paternalistic.” He hopes that The Warhol will instead act as a venue and reference point while spreading the voice of Pittsburgh’s younger community, many members of which are opening small galleries and cafés throughout the city and cultivating public forums for creative expression.
The widespread closing of Pittsburgh’s steel mills two decades ago left behind a post-industrial landscape ripe for artistic harvesting. The ensuing economic recession and increasing number of available warehouse loft spaces have combined to nurture an artist haven into being, nestled in small communities à la Los Angeles (due mostly to Pittsburgh’s lack of public transportation), but at a quarter of the living cost. Case in point: two formerly LA-based artists, one a Pittsburgh native, have taken up residence at the Brewhouse, an artist collective on the South Side, and opened their own oil painting academy (the Academy of the South Side), bringing established West-coast artists to Pittsburgh for workshops, demonstrations and other events.
After living in Pasadena while attending Art Center College of Design, Academy of the South Side’s founder, Tim Meehan, decided that he was wasting his time in LA’s endless rush hour traffic and wasting his money on overpriced rent. His current studio on the top floor of the Brewhouse with skyline views and enough space for workshop sessions and the occasional metal concert, would cost at least twice as much as an average month’s salary for a twenty-something, were it located in Williamsburg. Pittsburgh’s modest pace allows Meehan the free time to focus on his painting while supporting his fellow artists-in-residence and the Brewhouse’s cultural cause of community outreach and creative synergy across a variety of mediums, ranging from sculpture to puppetry to ceramics and so on.
Another artist space that provides artist’s studios, instruction and exhibitions to the public is the Pittsburgh Glass Center, which has put Pittsburgh on the international glass community’s radar so effectively that GAS (Glass Art Society) will have their annual conference in Pittsburgh next summer. With hot glass, flameworking, coldworking, casting and kilnworking studios, the Glass Center invites novices and professionals to experiment with new and familiar techniques in a state of the art facility that was also erected in accordance with the U.S. Green Building Council’s standards for eco-friendly design, a far cry from the factories that rained ash on the city when Warhol was an art student at CMU. Kathleen Mulcahy, PGC co-founder and co-chair of the 2007 GAS Conference, says about Pittsburgh on the Glass Center’s website, “Pittsburgh is at a point of transformation: from steel mills and glass factories to high technology and artist studios, from lost and abandoned spaces to reclamation through creative force. Brown fields have become green fields, empty buildings have become artists’ hubs. Not only has the city experienced a transformation but so have its people and institutions.”
The Mattress Factory is perhaps the most unique of Pittsburgh’s “institutional” artistic spaces. A reincarnated building located in a modest neighborhood on the North Side, the Mattress Factory does not shy away from its original function, from which its name derives. Its current function, as an installation museum that recruits world-renowned artists to live in the factory’s converted loft spaces and to construct site-specific installations, has brought some of the most celebrated living contemporary artists to the city such as Kiki Smith and Yayoi Kusama. The permanent collection boasts three mesmerizing installations by James Turrell, whose work is currently on view in Paris this summer in a retrospective at the Pompidou. The Mattress Factory also supports non-visual artistic events like poetry readings and concerts, bringing performers to the museum to engage the surrounding community on multiple levels.
Similarly, Mr. Small’s Funhouse, a converted church owned and operated by members of the band Rusted Root, runs the gamut of creative outreach by housing recording studios, artist-in-residence studios, a skate park and by hosting concerts by both local emerging bands as well as seasoned performers with cult-followings like My Chemical Romance, the Wailers, Jazz Mandolin Project, Blackalicious and The Dresden Dolls, to name a few. But Mr. Small’s, despite listing such pop phenoms as 50Cent/G-Unit and the Black Eyed Peas among their recording clients, has also initiated a non-profit dubbed Creative.Life.Support Records, which provides interest-free financial startup for recording projects by emerging artists, proving their loyalty to their community and their creative comrades.
Through the support of major institutions and grass roots non-profits of emerging artists’ endeavors there is a lot of comradery amongst the creative community, especially between young adults looking to make something happen. The Sprout Fund, a non-profit created for exactly this reason, is sponsoring projects all over the city, from large-scale murals to concerts and an array of public programs designed to facilitate creative alliances and growth in diverse neighborhoods throughout the former “smoky city.” Other projects that the Sprout Fund supports include Steel City Bio Fuels, Civic Cards (which raises public awareness for local political figures by printing baseball-esque cards with elected officials’ information), and a public art bike rack program, which commissions iron-working artists to design aesthetic bike racks around Pittsburgh to encourage alternative and environmentally-friendly means of transportation. Thus, grass-roots support is not strictly limited to the arts, but incorporates political and environmental priorities as well, creating a coherent effort at cultural change across multiple platforms that is slowly but surely changing the cultural fabric of Pittsburgh.
The Carnegie Museum of Art’s director Richard Armstrong observes that an NYC-based artist can choose to live in Bensonhurst, but, despite the manageable rent, he/she will not have the ability to concentrate on their work while forming a community in the same way that an artist who lives comfortably in Pittsburgh can. Despite the novel sense of belonging to a niche in the New York City art scene, the reality is that emerging artists are subjugated to the farthest perimeter, too far and too dispersed (and too broke) to truly develop visible and effective communities. Pittsburgh, however, may not have the elbow-rubbing potential of New York City, but it does allow emerging artists to make a living making art, not to mention the ability to pay rent while working part-time, an unimaginable luxury for those of us slaving away 40 hours a week to live with four roommates in Bed-Sty. Something to consider when the lease is up.
