An arriviste could self-invent into the New York scene through proximity and hustle

Evidence

Smithson, a self-invented art-world hipster and wise-guy geek still in his twenties, was seemingly born to the scene. A native of Passaic, New Jersey, who steeped himself in science fiction and never bothered with college, Smithson moved to the lower Lower East Side, took classes at the Arts Students League, hung out at the Cedar, babysat for his neighbor gallerist Richard Bellamy, sat for Alice Neel, and began to paint gnarly looking icons spooky enough to have been planted in a field of Haitian sugarcane. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1025

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s core thesis: cheap rent and social proximity (Cedar, Bellamy’s babysitting) let a college dropout self-invent as an artist—material conditions enabling invention density.