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[[logol]TV World Your Link to Tomorrow [[logo]]  April 22-28, 1978

SoHo

by John Minett

[[image]]Executive Producer Jaime Davidovich TV World Photo by Mark J. Grossman

Much has been said about tension in contemporary art. Jagger needs Richard much as a painter needs a skeptical audience. In art, challenge is a prerequisite. without it an otherwise taut, valid work becomes flaccid and cloyingly sentimental. Indeed, in the 60s, McCartney needed Lennon as intensely as Hippies needed Vietnam. When two opposing forces meet, clash and finally compromise they leave in their wake a creative documentary commonly referred to as "Art."

Nowhere is this concept more evident than in SoHo. Short for "South of Houston Street," the area is a neighborhood of late 19th Century buildings straddling lower Manhattan from Greenwich Village to the fringes of the financial district.

Here artists representing every possible medium work in galleries and studios that are above, or next to, the tough workmen who labor in plumbing supply houses and blackboard manufacturing companies. The abstract collides with the tangible and those pursuing the ethereal Good, True, and Beautiful learn to share the same winding streets with those filling work orders, meeting schedules and dealing with the nut and bolt realities of human commerce. The sharp and striking contrasts of this kind of environment create an ambience in which the artistic sensibility flourishes.

One of the most exciting manifestations of this comes to us via cable TV.

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