Chapter 3 - Greenwich Village and Emerging Bohemianism

Summary

During the 1940s and 1950s, the Village was the hub of Abstract Expressionism; it was home to Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, as well as the New York School of poets, who rubbed shoulders with artists and composers, among them John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. During the late 1940s and 1950s, the Village, according to the writer Anatole Broyard, was a place brimming with “terrific energy and curiosity,” where the Beat triumvirate – Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs – were at the vanguard of the Beat Generation. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Beat-influenced writers and artists, including the African American poet Ted Joans, were mainstays of coffee houses on McDougal Street and West 3rd and Bleecker Streets. During the 1960s, the Village became an important area for the burgeoning folk music scene, where the likes of Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk played in coffee houses and bars.