The Twilight of Bohemia: Westbeth and the Last Artists in New York

Memoirist Trachtenberg (The Book of Calamities) presents an intimate oral history of New York City’s Westbeth Artist Housing complex that speaks to the challenges of creative life in the city. Founded in 1970 in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District (then the Far West Village), the Westbeth provided subsidized housing and studio space to professional artists drowning in “underpaid and often humiliating day jobs” and exorbitant rents. Tracing the complex’s history through profiles of its residents, Trachtenberg spotlights Barton Lidicé Beneš, an eccentric visual artist who incorporated unusual materials into his work, including souvenirs of his AIDS treatment (such as pill capsules and even his infected blood); Susan Carlson, once the “diva and muse” of Charles Ludlam’s the Ridiculous Theater Company; and photographer Diane Arbus, who died by suicide in the building in 1971. The author peppers the narrative with his musings on Gay Milius, a friend and visual artist who also died, impoverished, by suicide there in 2006—a thread that’s moving but can feel disconnected from the rest of the history. More resonant are the links and contrasts drawn between what went on in the Westbeth and a changing New York City—from the gritty crime of the 1970s and ’80s to more recent gentrification—and meditations on the irresistible pull of the artistic dream in a city where it’s nearly impossible to support oneself as an artist. The result is a vivid slice of lesser-known New York City history. (Apr.)