One day I walked with one of these middleclass gentlemen into Manchester. I spoke to him about the disgraceful unhealthy slums and drew his attention to the disgusting conditions of that part of town in which thefactory workers lived. I declared that I had never seen so badly built a town in my life. He listened patiently and at the corner of the street at which we parted company he remarked: "And yet there is a good deal of money made here. Good morning, Sir."-Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England New York's Lower East Side is valuable property for today's art and realestate markets, and speculators have every reason to feel optimistic. A workingclass neighborhood for 160 years, the area has become in the 1980s the scene of a new art "phenomenon": over forty commercial galleries displaying their wares to a clientele of corporate art consultants and wealthy international collectors. In the fall of 1981 Fun Gallery and 51X opened. "When we started," explained Bill Stelling of Fun, "we didn't want to be considered a little podunk gallery in the East Village. We wanted people to see that we were as serious as any gallery on 57th Street."1 By the spring of 1982 Nature Morte, Civilian Warfare, and Gracie Mansion were also ready for serious business. During the 1983 art season the number of galleries escalated to twenty-five. Scattered throughout an area of twelve square blocks, these galleries coalesced into 1. All quoted statements, unless otherwise specified, are taken from interviews conducted by the authors in October and November 1984. OCTOBER "Manhattan's third art district, after Uptown and Soho."2 Most observers attribute the flurry of activity to a mystical vitality electrifying the Lower East Side and thus refuse to account for the interests operating to create the scene: "Unaccountably, at different times certain places-Paris's Left Bank, New York's Tenth Street-have an aura of art that attracts painters and sculptors."3 Far from the natural development that words such as phenomenon and aura suggest, however, Art District Three has been constructed with the aid of the entire apparatus of the art establishment. This role was uncritically applauded in a brochure accompanying one of the first exhibitions devoted exclusively to art from the Lower East Side galleries: "[The galleries] have been enthusiastically embraced by the full complement of the art worldpublic and private institutions, journalists, collectors and artists.. .. This development affirms the perpetual renewal of the artists' community."4 When articles on East Village art as a new collective entity began to appear in the major art publications in September 1982, there were only the original five galleries. Four months later these "pioneer" enterprises were lauded in the Village Voice as the "heroes" of the art world for their dealings on the "Neo-Frontier."5 In 1983, as an outpouring of articles on the new scene appeared in the Voice, Arts, Artnews, the New York Times, Flash Art, and Artforum, galleries began to prolife...
