Weekend Heller: Opening the East Village Eye

By: Steven Heller | August 12, 2017

Gallery 98 (134 S. Oxford St., Brooklyn) is selling copies of the East Village Eye. From May 1979 to January 1987, the East Village Eye, a monthly magazine of popular and avant garde culture, exerted a profound influence that eventually reached across the globe. Originally, the “eye” was the logo in the “O” of the East Village Other. But after it folded in the early 1970s it was up for grabs. Coverage in the East Village Eye of several key “scenes” eventually evolved into movements, including the East Village art scene, which nurtured legendary talents such as Keith Haring and David Wojnarowicz, while the Eye’s coverage of other emerging New York artists such as Sue Coe, Barbara Kruger and Kiki Smith helped illuminate the psycho-social conflicts running through the contemporary brain. Many such artists made work specifically for publication in the Eye. Check out more at Gallery 98.