Historic Site Name: Civilian Warfare

Address:  526 East 11th Street

Civilian Warfare (1982-1987) was a groundbreaking gallery that helped spearhead the meteoric rise of the East Village gallery movement that peaked between the years 1982-1985. Founded by two queer gallerists, Civilian Warfare was home to many queer and female artists who continue to influence the LGBTQ community history and culture today.

Civilian Warfare was founded by Dean Savard and Alan Barrows in 1982, two artists who met when Savard was an art student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Both worked at the same ice cream parlor and soon bonded over their shared love of art. Their relationship would soon become defined by their differences, having personalities so contradictory they became naturally complimentary. Savard could easily overwhelm with his charm and natural brilliance, whereas Barrows, quiet and calm, managed to somehow keep Savard’s exuberance tethered to reality. It was after a visit to the Fun Gallery in 1982 that the pair decided to start a venture of their own.

The gallery, founded at 526 East 11th street (ironically a former ice cream parlor) first served as both a studio and living space for Savard, who soon abandoned painting for curating. Civilian Warfare, like many galleries across the East Village, took advantage of a glut of abandoned storefronts to attempt what was then a modest goal; open a gallery where they could show the work of artists and friends they personally believed in. The gallery ran as a kind of an informal collective, with the roster of artists continuously helping with, starring in, or mounting each other's projects, inside and out of the gallery. These collaborations would prove crucial to their evolving identity as artists, and to the construction of queer narrative, both domestically and abroad.

“A well-known New York Times art critic rode her bicycle up to the tiny storefront gallery on a drug-infested street made famous by writer’s Jack Kerouac’s “Subterraneans” and Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” She took some notes and a photograph of the work and a review of the galleries in the East Village appeared in the Sunday edition of the New York Times. All hell broke loose after that story ran. Stretch limos started showing up with the occupants snapping up artwork that would end up in the collections of some of the most prestigious museums in the world.”

-Alan Barrows, Civilian Warfare Co-founder

After its launch in 1982, the gallery was slow to gain momentum, and sold very little in its first few months. This required Barrows and Savard to maintain their day jobs while keeping the gallery’s hours limited to nights and weekends (unheard of for a gallery at the time) with Savard still living full time in the back. However, the East Village art scene quickly gained serious traction and by 1983 Civilian Warfare became one of the hubs of activity. 1983 was also the year they gave David Worjarowicz a spot in their group show, Hit and Run, followed by a solo show in 1984.

From 1983 on, Wojnarowicz was an undisputed, if not extremely reluctant, art star of the East Village. The more he rebelled against the warming waters of the established art world the more he found himself embraced by it, even as he continuously escalated the unadulteratedly queerness of his work. His art encapsulated the reality and terror of everyday queer life, as the queer community, and queer sexuality itself, continued to face multi-layered oppression, compounded by the growing onslaught of drug addiction and HIV/AIDS.

By 1985 AIDs had already claimed the lives of East Village luminaries such as Hibiscus (1982) Klaus Nomi (1983) Gordon Stevenson (1983) and Nicolas Moufarrege (1985) with many more having been diagnosed. Wojnarowicz, who by 1984-1985 was showing work in multiple galleries across the US and Europe, felt avoiding the intersection of art and politics was impossible, if not downright immoral, in light of what AIDs was inflicting on queer people.

In addition to Wojnarowicz, Civilian Warfare gave space and exposure to many queer and female artists who would never have had such exposure in the established art worlds of 57th street or Soho. Such artists included Greer Lankton, a transgender pioneer whose puppets defied genre as well as gender; Huck Snyder, painter, installation artist, interior designer and set designer best known for his work designing sets for his collaborator and partner John Kelly; and Luis Frangella, sculptor and figurative painter, who was also a major contributor to the Piers with his floor-to-ceiling portraits and murals, many painted while in the company of various Civilian-affiliated artists.

Savard’s heroin problem grew along with the gallery’s success, which further complicated the gallery’s move to 151 Avenue B in 1984. When Civilian Warfare closed in 1987, it had moved yet again to its third and final location at 614 East 9th street. Alan would leave NYC in 1987 and relocate to Washington DC, exhausted from both the gallery and the relentless loss of brilliant artists and friends to drug addiction, mental illness, and AIDs. Interventions for Savard were attempted, but his addiction proved insurmountable. His drug use exacerbated his physical decline, and he died of complications from HIV/AIDS on March 30, 1990.

Sources:

Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz. 2012. Cynthia Carr

The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984. 2006. Edited by Martin J. Taylor

New, Used & Improved: Art for the Arts. 1987. By Peter Frank and Michael McKenzie.