Anarchy and Art: From the Paris Commune to the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Softcover

Antliff, Allan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1551522187 ISBN 13: 9781551522180

Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007

Synopsis

One of the powers of art is its ability to convey the human aspects of political events. In this fascinating survey on art, artists, and anarchism, Allan Antliff interrogates critical moments when anarchist artists have confronted pivotal events over the past 140 years. The survey begins with Gustave Courbet’s activism during the 1871 Paris Commune (which established the French republic) and ends with anarchist art during the fall of the Soviet empire. Other subjects include the French neoimpressionists, the Dada movement in New York, anarchist art during the Russian Revolution, political art of the 1960s, and gay art and politics post-World War II. Throughout, Antliff vividly explores art’s potential as a vehicle for social change and how it can also shape the course of political events, both historic and present-day; it is a book for the politically engaged and art aficionados alike.

Allan Antliff is the author of Anarchist Modernism.

About this title

About the Author

Allan Antliff is the Canada Research Chair at the University of Victoria. He is the author of Anarchist Modernism: Art, Politics and the First American Avant-Garde, has written extensively for the anarchist press, and is currently contributing editor to the Alternative Press Review and art editor of Anarchist Studies.

Review

This insightful and clearly-written collection of essays explores a broad and exciting range of responses to anarchist theory and politics by artists and other creative intellectuals between the 1860s and the late twentieth century. Using an approach that combines scholarly rigor with a lively and politically-committed voice, Antliff shows how diverse the connections have been between aesthetic innovation and anarchist activism. An indispensable contribution to the history of art and the field of anarchist studies.
―Robyn Roslak, author of Neo-Impressionism and Anarchism in Fin-de-Siècle France: Painting, Politics and Landscape (Robyn Roslak)

A very readable book that brings theory and philosophy together with art, music, history, economics, and politics. From Proudhonian art criticism and the Paris Commune, to the mechanist Marxism of constructivist theater in post-revolutionary Russia, to Richard Mock s linocuts addressing the horrors of the first Gulf War, Antliff is convincing in his ability to link artistic and anarchist themes, to write a new history that brings to life many forgotten or obscured aspects of both these worlds.
―Richard J.F. Day, author of Gramsci is Dead (Richard J.F. Day)

In this accessible, well-researched history, Allan Antliff provides an episodic guide to the varied and often surprising ways artists have explicitly sought to give form to anarchist principles through their works over the last 150 years; in doing so, he has given a convincing boost to the idea of art as an effective forum for political activism.
―Canadian Art (Canadian Art 2007-10-15)

Allan Antliff is becoming an important and productive writer on anarchist history.
―Seven Oaks Magazine (Seven Oaks Magazine 2007-06-01)

A thoughtful discussion of art's potential as a conduit for revolution and meaningful social change.
―Midwest Book Review (Midwest Book Review 2007-08-01)

[The book] reminds us of the potent status once accorded to art in the West, the fact that dissident artists could be--and often were--bankrupted, exiled, or even executed for disturbing the peace.... Anarchy and Art is an excellent guide to the rebel yells of the past.
―Quill & Quire (Quill & Quire 2007-08-25)

Antliff's research has yielded a new theoretical insight into a genre not often considered.... Anarchism, as Emma Goldman noted, stands for the liberation of the human mind and for "free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations." Anarchist artists have heeded this motto, and the diversity of their visual imagination is richly captured in this book.
―Bookforum (Bookforum 2007-10-01)

Passionate and readable .... Antliff manages to produce an interesting and konwledgeable commentary.
―Nexus (Nexus 2007-10-03)

The tenuous relationship between fine art and radical politics emerges clearly in Antliff's conceptualization of political art.... the book provides strong material on how art can serve anarchistic ideas.
―Left History magazine (Left History 2008-02-01)

Edition details

• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1551522187
• ISBN 13: 9781551522180
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224