Jane Dickson in Times Square

Artist Jane Dickson is a deep-rooted and central voice in New York City’s complex creative history. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, she was part of the movement joining the legacies of downtown art, punk rock, and hip hop through her involvement with the Colab art collective, the Fashion Moda gallery, and legendary exhibitions including the Real Estate Show and Times Square Show.

In the midst of this groundbreaking work, Dickson lived, worked and raised two children in an apartment on 43rd Street and 8th Avenue at a time when the neighborhood was at its most infamous, crime-ridden, and spectacularly seedy. Through it all, Jane photographed, drew and painted extraordinary scenes of life in Times Square. These works, many of which are reproduced here for the first time, include candid documentary snapshots, roughly vibrant charcoal sketches, and paintings created on surfaces ranging from sandpaper to Brillo pads.

Featuring a foreword by Chris Kraus, Jane Dickson in Times Square is a time machine back to a New York City that was truly wild: lawless, manic, sometimes squalid, sometimes magnificent.

Jane Dickson is an American painter. As a central figure of New York’s explosive downtown / uptown art scene starting in the late 1970s, she has participated in numerous iconic exhibitions. Among her many accolades are creating the poster and animations for Colab’s Times Square Show, exhibiting in Keith Haring’s first group show at the Mudd Club, and mounting a solo exhibition at the East Village’s legendary Fun gallery. From 1978 to 1981, Dickson worked the weekend night shift for the computer billboard at 1 Times Square, where she later organized the Public Art Fund’s Messages to the Public series from 1982-1990, for which she invited friends such as Haring, Jenny Holzer and David Hammons to contribute digital artwork. In the ensuing decades, Dickson continued to create and exhibit frequently, and her work is currently represented in more than 30 museum collections, including those of MoMA, the Whitney, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2008, Dickson’s long and historic association with Times Square was made permanent with the creation of The Revelers, a piece comprising 68 life-sized mosaic figures of New Year’s Eve partygoers, commissioned by the Metropolitan Transit Authority and installed in the 42nd Street subway station, where it has since become a beloved tourist destination.