The Smoldering Core: Photographer Stephen Aiken: Art, New York City, and the 1970s
Provincetown Magazine June 8, 2023
by Steve Desroches
Stephen AikenRon Gustavson, East Village, 1978, Archival Pigment Print ed. 1016 x 22 in
As a teenager growing up in Cambridge, Stephen Aiken loved the Velvet Underground. Though largely a phenomenon of New York City, the Velvet Underground played more in Boston in the mid-1960s than anywhere else, usually at the legendary rock and roll concert hall, the Boston Tea Party on Berkeley Street in the South End. There was just something about the band and the then gritty city that clicked as it attracted diverse audiences full of college students, bikers, bohemian eccentrics, artists, and the beautiful people dipping their toe into the cutting edge. Lou Reed declared the Boston Tea Party the band’s “favorite place to play in the whole country.” And Aiken was one of those in the packed venue who couldn’t get enough of the totally new sound that was the Velvet Underground as they sang about the taboo, the shocking, and the erotic.
Joseph Beuys,
The New School, 1974
Aiken saw them many times, but one night in particular, seeing the Velvet Underground was a tectonic moment that would change the trajectory of his life forever. The Velvet Underground had come to Boston to perform as part of the Plastic Exploding Inevitable, Andy Warhol’s multimedia show featuring rock and roll, dance, film, and pop art, an event that crossed Cape Cod Bay to play Provincetown, too. As Aiken took it all in, the artist within not only took root, but bloomed.
“Warhol was like the door just flew open,” says Aiken. “Everything was permissible. Art was not just a moneyed elitist thing. It was my culture now.”
Artist in Residence: Downtown New York in the 1970s is on exhibition at the Schoolhouse Gallery, 494 Commercial St., now through June 26. An opening reception is planned for Friday, June 9, 5 to 7 p.m. For more information call 508.487.4800 or visit galleryschoolhouse.com. The book of the same name is also available at the gallery and online.
