#5 spot

Some of the painters who frequented the Five Spot with Jack Tworkov were the friends who first introduced David Amram to the club. Amram thinks part of the affinity of painters and jazz musicians in the fifties was that they shared a common experience: “The struggle painters had was like that of jazz musicians. People still thought that if art wasn’t from Europe it was worthless. Jazz was an accepted art form in Europe in the fifties, but only a small group of people recognized it here. Miles and Bird were playing an incredibly sophisticated kind of music, like spontaneous chamber music at the best level.”

     —Dan Wakefield, New York in the ‘50s

Above: A back table at the Five Spot, 1957: sculptor David Smith, painter Helen Frankenthaler (back to camera), poet and art guru Frank O'Hara, painter Larry Rivers, painter Grace Hartigan, unidentified man, sculptor Anita Huffington, and poet Kenneth Koch.