Will patrons be permitted to shoot up in the museum adding a touch of performance art?
Posted on 05/25/2010 9:57:53 AM PDT by a fool in paradise
Most club bathrooms are far from a pretty sight so I can only imagine the type of facility CBGB offered fans in need of relief after one too many beers. A new art exhibit in Hartford, Conn., will give music lovers the chance to return to the scene of the crime to relive the glory that was the punk rock club’s bathroom.
An artist named Justin Lowe is recreating the bathroom of the iconic New York venue in an installation taking up four galleries of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the graffiti-covered restroom will be represented in part by “walls papered in Day-Glo collages involving movie stars, vintage book covers and illustrations of insects.”
The artist says the installation, which runs June 3 through 5, is inspired by the club’s Surrealist history. If that’s so, the CBGB bathroom reimagined should fit in perfectly at the Wadsworth Atheneum because the museum held the country’s first exhibit of Surrealism in 1931 and was also one of Salvador Dali’s old haunts.
Lowe knows a thing or two about grime and seedy scenes. Last summer he collaborated with another artist in creating a fake methamphetamine lab in the New York gallery Deitch Projects. The “Black Acid Co-op” installation had everything from gurgling beakers and tubes to a melting toilet.
CBGB opened in 1974 and closed in 2006 after a dispute with the Bowery Residents’ Committee over back rent. In its heyday the club featured punk and New Wave bands such as the Ramones, Misfits, The Cramps and Blondie.
In the case of CBGB's, it was an order of magnitude worse than that.
Will patrons be permitted to shoot up in the museum adding a touch of performance art?
The ‘performance art’ will be provided by hot and cold running cockroaches, just like the original.
*Grabs hand sanitizer after viewing pic*
Liberals are ALWAYS preoccuppied with low life lifestyles. They love to ELEVATE them and dare you to turn your nose up at it. Then they’ll call you snooty.
Yeah but when the gallery closed at night, things really got cooking. < /sarc >
ick - you can almost smell the picture.
I think I saw Bad Brains there in the early 80’s. Compared to my more familiar punk venue, Newport Ky’s similarly celebrated Jockey Club, CBGB was the Palladium.
Gotta like the “no smoking” sign...
1980s Music Ping
Trust me, the “gay crowd” had their own music scene and much, much, much nicer toilets.
There is a movie with a scene in CBGB’s bathroom (from the 1970s). It’s called The Foreigner and the Cramps (early lineup, pre-recording career) play some thugs who beat up one of the characters.
The clip can be found on Youtube.
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