Graphic novel and urban history: New York from below

The Bremen Golden Press has published a graphic novel called “Clayton,” but it is called “comic anthology” on the cover, probably because more than a dozen illustrators and photographers were involved. The subtitle of the book edited by Julian Voloj about the artist Clayton Patterson, who was born in Calgary, Canada in 1948 and has lived in New York City since 1979, is: “The Godfather of the Lower East Side.” This name goes back to a CNN presenter and sounds a lot like Cosa Nostra. Clayton Patterson’s mafia business is not at all. On the contrary.

John Strausbaugh wrote in the New York Times in 2005: “Have you attended a public gathering on the Lower East Side or the East Village in the last 25 years – a punk rock gig, a community board meeting, a poetry performance Slam, a Santería ritual or the infamous Tompkins Square riot in 1988 – there’s a good chance you’ve landed in Clayton Patterson’s archives. He was the bear-like man with the goatee and the biker outfit, who mingled with the crowd but never joined in, watching everything with his photo or video camera…”

In his book “The Camera” (2020), Clayton Patterson, who grew up in a proletarian milieu, writes: “Through my cameras I have gained detailed knowledge and invaluable insights into a whole range of cultures and communities. From the Hispanic street life on the Lower East Side to the Orthodox Jews there. From drag performers to tattoo artists. From fashion and celebrity culture to the homeless and the outcast. From the avant-garde to everyday life, etc. “Patterson was described in The New Yorker magazine as an “everyday historian of the Lower East Side,” and ten years ago when he considered leaving New York City for the Salzkammergut, that marked this for the “New York Times” it was the end of an era, “the departure of the last bohemian from Manhattan.” But Patterson continued to live on Essex Street, in the once run-down house he had bought on credit in 1983 with Elsa Rensaa, his partner since 1972.

They turned their backs on the commercial mainstream of art, in which the artist couple could have easily achieved success. They hated Soho’s elitist art scene. From the mid-1980s onwards, the two not only exhibited the works of artists and authors working in New York as well as personalities from their neighborhood who also had nothing to do with the art market, but also produced baseball caps called “Clayton Hats”, including well-known artists such as Jim Dine and David Hockney, Mick Jagger and Hollywood stars such as Matt Dillon, Rob Reiner and Gus Van Sant. In “GQ” magazine, the “Clayton Hat” was praised as one of the two best baseball caps “made in the US of A”.

They used the money they made from these caps to create the Clayton Archives, a collection of photos, videos, artwork, books, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, posters and ephemera of the Lower East Side, including old heroin baggies for which every dealer had its own logo. The collection also includes the gang jacket of Cochise, a member of the “Satans Sinners,” which can be seen in the book. He spent a few years in prison for two counts of attempted murder because he unceremoniously threw two gang members who wanted to quit the Sinners into the East River. After his prison stay, he found art thanks to Patterson.

When Patterson wanted to photograph tattoos, he founded the Tattoo Society of New York in 1986 with Ari Roussimoff, a Russian painter and filmmaker. This contributed significantly to the lifting of the tattoo ban in New York. Word got around and Patterson was invited to the Wildstyle Tattoo Fair in Austria several times and documented its development.

Patterson has published books about the Lower East Side, such as “Resistance: A Radical Social and Political History of the Lower East Side” (2007) and “Jews: A People’s History of the Lower East Side” (2011). He is also responsible for the NY Acker Awards, which honor experimental and outlaw artists and activists.

Since 1999, Patterson has led the NO!art movement together with the German artist Dietmar Kirves, who died in June 2023. This radical avant-garde movement began in New York in 1959, organized by Sam Goodman, Stanley Fisher and Holocaust survivor Boris Lurie (1924–2008). The art critic Harald Rosenberg wrote that NO!art reflects the mix of scum and crime with which the mass media floods the minds of our time. Patterson met Boris Lurie, who was born in Leningrad in 1924, at a film screening. Lurie came to New York with his father in 1946 and used art to process his traumas. He is quoted in the book as saying: “It’s about unabashed self-expression that leads to social action.”

In Clayton, the life of Patterson, this archivist of all things Lower East Side, is lovingly portrayed and it is mentioned in passing that the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was inspired by Patterson, whom he met during the Tompkins Square Riots. On the inside cover there is also a selection of portrait photos of Patterson, who modestly concealed the existence of this book from his German friends.

Julian Voloj (ed.): Clayton. The Godfather of the Lower East Side. A flexi-record comic anthology by Mario Hyman. Golden Press, hardcover, 112 pages, €28