{"id":8819,"date":"2024-07-03T00:49:41","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T00:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/?p=8819"},"modified":"2024-07-03T00:49:41","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T00:49:41","slug":"anton-van-dalen-devoted-chronicler-of-new-yorks-east-village-dies-at-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/?p=8819","title":{"rendered":"Anton Van Dalen, devoted chronicler of New York’s East Village, dies at 86"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

Anton van Dalen, who in his unique and vivid writing chronicled the East Village\u2019s transition from slum to gentrification, died on June 25 at his home in the community to which he devoted his life. He was 86.<\/p>\n

In his view, East Village is sometimes desolate, sometimes bustling, sometimes devastated, and sometimes full of secret life.[I] It always starts with the family, then the street, the neighborhood, the city, the world,” Van Dalen wrote in the letter. Allergic<\/em> the critic John Yau wrote in an email in 2020. Indeed, he seems to make no distinction between practicality and aesthetics in his own life: Yau recalls cats and dogs roaming around the studio and apartment, surrounded by free-range chickens, which he keeps \u201cso his children can have fresh eggs in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Dalen is perhaps best known for his work Avenue A Cut-Out Theater (1995-2016), in which he transformed the house he had lived in since 1972 into a microcosm of the changing tides of the East Village, telling the story of the neighborhood\u2019s ongoing transformation through cutouts on a model of his apartment. <\/p>\n