Cheap derelict loft space physically enabled Jack Smith’s maximalist set design and performances.

Evidence

Richard Preston, who visited Smith’s loft in late 1966, wrote a colorful description: “I wandered around his loft thru chaos, past the red velvet cushion covered with dime store jewelry, past the bust of a mannequin which looked like a bust of Caesar’s whore, over a pile of grimy diaphanous costumes, around a transistor radio sputtering Spanish serenades and sat next to two elephant tusks, one artificial and one a genuine molar. Behind me were the artificial sunflowers bathing themselves in a revolting [sic] multicolored display light. To my left was a potbellied stove and a mountain of lumber. I’m not sure whether the lumber was a fuel source but I do know where it came from—the ceiling. This was conspicuous because half of it (the ceiling) wasn’t there. The walls went up and up into the loft above.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 2026

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the reader’s core goal — cheap rent and physical space as a material condition for experimental art. The collapsed ceilings, free lumber, and open loft walls are the physical infrastructure of the underground.
• XREF: This is exactly the kind of physical-material-contexts evidence that grounds the claim that avant-gardes are produced by conditions, not genius; connects to the general shelf question of why culture stagnates now (no cheap lofts, no ignorable spaces).