Soon after, artist Barry Fellman recreated the interior of the store, traveling to Texas to buy Pearl's original cabinets, fixtures, and various products, and turn them into an installation. "Art Show" is on view once again at the Center for Visual Communication in Miami, and will soon be touring the country.
From the press release:
"The installation provokes questions about the availability of art supplies, how they are purchased, and how their use is changing as artists adopt digital technology and new forms of presentation. Art Store extends Duchamp's seminal Readymades, sourced from consumer culture, to a collection of mass produced objects actually used to create art."
"Art Store will be launched in 2016 as a traveling installation to activate communities nationwide by serving as a point of engagement to support local museums, schools and organization involved in arts and education. Institutions may contact CVC for more information on exhibiting Art Store in their community."
Meanwhile, back on Canal Street, the Pearl Paint space remains vacant, another casualty of high-rent blight.
3 comments:
Actually the downfall of Pearl Paint had far more to do with mismanagement and family in-fighting than real estate pressure. Tax fraud etc. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/pearl-paint/?_r=0
Pearl Paint series of stores on Lispenard Street (the store on Canal also fronted on Lispenard) between Church Street and Broadway were the unofficial Art Store District for years. Located in cast iron buildings over a century old with high ceilings and loaded on every floor with art stuffs. You could get any art supply item with excellent specialized support from the staff. Seeing all the supplies in person could inspire many creative ideas. The exhibit looks interesting in that respect. Now that is a lost world. It was also a very seedy looking block that was probably very low rent back in the 50s 60s 70s 80s when the area art scene was in its heyday. When I first shopped there in the 90s, the block looked like the perfect place for drug users to score some dope and shoot up.
While I am sad that Pearl is gone, I would not go so far as to say it reflects some art supply apocalypse. There are actually other art supply stores in NYC. I don't live in NYC anymore, I live in Maryland...and here in a city less than 1/10th the size of NYC, we have at least 5 pretty well stocked art supply shops. Pearl didn't actually have great stock in the store during it's final years, it was getting a little thin. In any case, there is probably a greater variety of art supplies available now than ever before.
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