NO!Art
Encyclopedia
NO!art is a radical avant-garde
anti-art
movement started in New York in 1959. Its founders sought to deliver a shock to the complacent consumerist society around them.
The movement was initiated by Boris Lurie
, Sam Goodman and Stanley Fisher who had come together to organise exhibitions at the March Gallery. They gave the name NO!Art to the movement on the occasion of their show at the Gallery Gertrude Stein. They set themselves against the contemporary trends in Abstract Expressionism
and Pop Art
in art, and used their work to attack fascism, racism and imperialism in politics.
The NO!art exhibitions bore titles such as the Doom Show, the Involvement Show, the No Show and the Vulgar Show. They were often scatological in theme with one exhibition, the 1964 No Sculptures/Shit Show featuring works resembling piles of excrement. The Holocaust was another recurrent theme and the artists sometime provocatively referred to their work as "Jew Art".
In his essay, “Bull by the Horns” art critic Harold Rosenberg
wrote “NO!art reflects the mixture of crap and crime with which the mass media floods the mind of our time. It is Pop with venom added.”
Since 1999 The NO!art is led by Dietmar Kirves
(headquarters Berlin), and Clayton Patterson
(headquarters New York).
Members are Rocco Armento, Isser Aronovici (†), Enrico Baj
(†), Paolo Baratella, Herb Brown, Ronaldo Brunet, Guenter Brus, Al D'Arcangelo (†), Aleksey Dayen(†), Frank-Kirk Ehm-Marks, Erro (Ferro), Klaus Fabricius, Charles Gatewood, Paul Georges (†), Jochen Gerz, Dorothie Gillespie, Esther Morgenstern Gilman (†), Amikam Goldman, Leon Golub
(t), Blalla W. Hallmann (t), Harry Hass, Allan Kaprow
(†), Kommissar Hjuler
(Detlev Hjuler) and Mama Baer
(Andrea Katharina Ingeborg Hjuler), Yayoi Kusama
, Konstantin K. Kuzminsky, Jean-Jacques Lebel
, Suzanne Long (Harriet Wood), LST, Enzo Mastrangelo, Stu Mead
, Peter Meseck, Lil Picard (†), Leonid Pinchevsky, Bernard Rancillac, Francis Salles, Naomi Tereza Salmon, Reinhard Scheibner, Bruno Schleinstein (†), Dominik Stahlberg, Michelle Stuart
, Aldo Tambellini, Seth Tobocman
, Jean Toche, Toyo Tsuchiya
, Wolf Vostell
(†), Friedrich Wall, Mathilda Wolf, Natalia E. Woytasik, Miron Zownir.
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
anti-art
Anti-art
Anti-art is a loosely-used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage point of art...
movement started in New York in 1959. Its founders sought to deliver a shock to the complacent consumerist society around them.
The movement was initiated by Boris Lurie
Boris Lurie
Boris Lurie was an American artist and writer. He co-founded the NO!Art movement which calls for art leading to social action...
, Sam Goodman and Stanley Fisher who had come together to organise exhibitions at the March Gallery. They gave the name NO!Art to the movement on the occasion of their show at the Gallery Gertrude Stein. They set themselves against the contemporary trends in Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
and Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
in art, and used their work to attack fascism, racism and imperialism in politics.
The NO!art exhibitions bore titles such as the Doom Show, the Involvement Show, the No Show and the Vulgar Show. They were often scatological in theme with one exhibition, the 1964 No Sculptures/Shit Show featuring works resembling piles of excrement. The Holocaust was another recurrent theme and the artists sometime provocatively referred to their work as "Jew Art".
In his essay, “Bull by the Horns” art critic Harold Rosenberg
Harold Rosenberg
Harold Rosenberg was an American writer, educator, philosopher and art critic. He coined the term Action Painting in 1952 for what was later to be known as abstract expressionism. The term was first employed in Rosenberg's essay "American Action Painters" published in the December 1952 issue of...
wrote “NO!art reflects the mixture of crap and crime with which the mass media floods the mind of our time. It is Pop with venom added.”
Since 1999 The NO!art is led by Dietmar Kirves
Dietmar Kirves
- Early work :Since 1964 he works in the field of mixed media works with film, photos, music, sculptures and environments.In 1970 he created the mediacontact agency in Düsseldorf in collaboration with Jochen Gerz and Terry Fox...
(headquarters Berlin), and Clayton Patterson
Clayton Patterson
Clayton Patterson is a Canadian-born artist, photographer, videographer, and folk historian. Since moving to New York City in 1979, his work has focused almost exclusively on documenting the art, life and times of the Lower East Side in Manhattan.-Early life:Before moving to New York City in...
(headquarters New York).
Members are Rocco Armento, Isser Aronovici (†), Enrico Baj
Enrico Baj
Enrico Baj was an Italian artist and writer on art. Many of his works show an obsession with nuclear war. He created prints, sculptures but especially collage. He was close to the surrealist and dada movements, and was later associatied with CoBrA. As an author he has been described as a leading...
(†), Paolo Baratella, Herb Brown, Ronaldo Brunet, Guenter Brus, Al D'Arcangelo (†), Aleksey Dayen(†), Frank-Kirk Ehm-Marks, Erro (Ferro), Klaus Fabricius, Charles Gatewood, Paul Georges (†), Jochen Gerz, Dorothie Gillespie, Esther Morgenstern Gilman (†), Amikam Goldman, Leon Golub
Leon Golub
Leon Golub was an American painter. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, where he also studied, receiving his BA at the University of Chicago in 1942, his BFA and MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1949 and 1950, respectively.He was married to and collaborated with the artist Nancy Spero...
(t), Blalla W. Hallmann (t), Harry Hass, Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
(†), Kommissar Hjuler
Kommissar Hjuler
Kommissar Hjuler works as a sound recordist in the field of Noise and Post-industrial music, visual artist and film maker at Flensburg, a town on the German border with Denmark. He often works together with his wife Mama Baer as Kommissar Hjuler und Frau. As self-taught artist he began making...
(Detlev Hjuler) and Mama Baer
Mama Baer
Mama Baer works as a sound recordist in the field of Noise and Post-industrial music, visual artist and film maker at Flensburg, a town on the German border with Denmark. She often works together with her husband Kommissar Hjuler as Kommissar Hjuler und Frau...
(Andrea Katharina Ingeborg Hjuler), Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama
is a Japanese artist whose paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation...
, Konstantin K. Kuzminsky, Jean-Jacques Lebel
Jean-Jacques Lebel
Jean-Jacques Lebel is a French artist, poet, poetry publisher, political activist and scholar born in Paris in 1936. He is known primarily for his work with Happenings, and as an art theory writer and art curator. He is the son of Robert Lebel, art critic and friend of Marcel Duchamp.-Life and...
, Suzanne Long (Harriet Wood), LST, Enzo Mastrangelo, Stu Mead
Stu Mead
Stu Mead is an American painter living in Germany. He is primarily-known for girl art incorporating strong elements of sexual fantasy and taboo themes, including adolescent sexuality and bestiality...
, Peter Meseck, Lil Picard (†), Leonid Pinchevsky, Bernard Rancillac, Francis Salles, Naomi Tereza Salmon, Reinhard Scheibner, Bruno Schleinstein (†), Dominik Stahlberg, Michelle Stuart
Michelle Stuart
Michelle Stuart through her art has created complex, multifaceted investigations of the relationship between nature and culture for over four decades,. Her artworks range in scale from monumental earthworks to intimate talismanic sculptures...
, Aldo Tambellini, Seth Tobocman
Seth Tobocman
Seth Tobocman is a radical comic book artist who has been living in Manhattan's Lower East Side since 1978. Tobocman is best known for his creation of the political comic book World War 3 Illustrated, which he started in 1979 with fellow artist Peter Kuper...
, Jean Toche, Toyo Tsuchiya
Toyo Tsuchiya
Toyo Tsuchiya is a Japanese born artist and photographer and one of the early artists involved in the Rivington School art movement of the East Village art scene of New York City of the 1980s.Toyo Tsuchiya moved from Japan to New York in 1980...
, Wolf Vostell
Wolf Vostell
Wolf Vostell was a German painter, sculptor, noise music maker and Happening artist of the second half of the 20th century. Wolf Vostell is considered one of the pioneers of video art, environment-sculptures, Happenings and the Fluxus Movement...
(†), Friedrich Wall, Mathilda Wolf, Natalia E. Woytasik, Miron Zownir.
External sources
- http://www.no-art.info The NO!art website
- http://www.no-art.info/_involvement/en.html THE NO!art Members
- Fletcher, Robert Beyond resistance: the future of freedom (chapter 'No!art Negative Aesthetics as Resistance to the Art of Forgetting')
- Boris Lurie, Leader of a Confrontational Art Movement, Dies at 83 Colin Moynihan, NY Times January 12, 2008
- First and Final Refusal - Resurrecting Boris Lurie, the Original NO!art Man Ezra Glinter, Forward, July 14, 2010
- Boris Lurie's NO!art and the Holocaust Jan Herman, Arts Journal Blog
- NO-Art: An American Psycho-Social Phenomenon Emanuel K. Schwartz and Reta Shacknove Schwartz, Leonardo, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Summer, 1971), pp. 245-254 MIT Press
- ArtCat - Soho - Westwood Gallery - Boris Lurie: NO!art. An Exhibition of Early Work