An intimate insider's account of New York's most radical cultural revolution and the women who obliterated every barrier in their pathIn 1975 a young queer singer from Cleveland meets Nan Goldin and joins her in New York's bombed-out downtown, where something unprecedented is brewing. At Max's Kansas City and CBGBs, in derelict lofts and underground clubs, a generation of visionary women artists is rewriting the rules of creativity, sexuality, and power.
Adele Bertei didn't just witness the No Wave explosion—she ignited it. As acetone organist for the Contortions and Brian Eno's assistant, she was at the epicenter when punk collided with post-punk, when Lydia Lunch screamed her first songs, when Kathy Acker was penning her transgressive novels, when Kathryn Bigelow was making her first films.
No New York reveals the untold story of the boundary-pushing women who made No Wave possible: Nan Goldin capturing flash-lit portraits of gender fluidity, Barbara Kruger deconstructing media, Kiki Smith exploring the body's mysteries, Lizzie Borden challenging cinema itself. While mainstream culture wallowed in sexism and homophobia, these artists created something fluid, fierce, and transgressive.
Raw and gripping,
No New York takes readers deep into the artistic and sexual experimentation of an era when everyone read Jean Genet, quoted Antonin Artaud, and believed true expression mattered more than money or fame.
Includes 55 rarely seen images of iconic musicians and artists that capture the look and feel of the era. Images are from Bertei's personal collection as well as well-known artists and photographers like Nan Goldin, Richard Prince, Vivienne Dick, Michael Granros, Marcia Resnick, and Julia Gorton.
An intimate look into New York's revolutionary No Wave art and music scene, and the women who shaped it, by one of its key progenitors
Downtown NYC of the mid-1970s and early 80s was the perfect landscape for reinvention. If the Lost Generation writers telegraphed the death of the American dream, the No Wave era, led by artists including Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Nan Goldin, Sonic Youth and the Contortions, challenged that dream by howling "NO" while creating a counterculture that brought punk, rock, jazz, funk, the art world, hip hop, and outlaw literature together into an international explosion of creativity. Why was this scene so compelling, and remains so today? What set this confluence of time, place, and people apart from the rest? The answer, in a word: women. Women, resisting stereotypes. Reinventing themselves according to their individual artistic visions.
Adele Bertei was a pivotal figure in the No Wave movement. She was an original member of the Contortions and Brian Eno's fascination with the band resulted in the seminal No New York record, released in 1978. No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene will provide an uncompromising testimony to the first significant, international movement of women artists creating work on an equal footing with the men, the fruits of which were some of the most striking and unique of this era.
