New Book Explores How Lower Manhattan Shaped the Coenties Slip Group

In the 1950s, a venerable collective of artists and thinkers lived in dilapidated sail-making warehouses on a dead-end street by the water in Lower Manhattan. They collectively became known as the Coenties Slip Group, situated within a couple blocks of Pearl Street and South Street. The cadre produced painters such as Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Robert Indiana and the recently passed Ann Wilson, and became a “teeming hothouse of the New York avant-garde” according to the New Yorker. 

The influential Lower Manhattan arts scene is chronicled in a new book: “The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever” by art critic Prudence Peiffer. The New Yorker calls it “a tricky blend of mythmaking and myth-busting” that highlights how the neighborhood helped shape the artists and their work: 

“One reason the Slip’s residents were overlooked, Peiffer suggests, was that they shared no obvious brand or style; their identity was having no identity. None of them plays the lead in her book, but neither does the crew as a whole. The true hero is an environment, an atmosphere—in the parlance of our times, a vibe.”

photo: HarperCollins