From Publishers Weekly
The coupling of Anarchist political movements and art is not a topic likely to attract broad interest, yet the issues dealt with by author and art historian Antliff (Anarchist Modernism) in this collection of essays have greater range than the politics of the extreme left. One typically enlivening chapter is devoted to the personal reminiscences of Susan Simensky Bietila, a painter on the scene of the American student movement of the 1960s; among stories of student strikes and absurdist, performance art-like protests, she relates her struggle with art professors at Brooklyn College, who insisted that fine art could not have explicit political content. That debate is central to Antliff's work, and the implications he draws in these eight scholarly essays carry resonance beyond the political questions used to frame it. Bookended by an argument between French 19th century leftists Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Emile Zola and the fall of the Berlin wall (overlapped by the first Gulf War), with stops in 1880s Paris, New York during WWI, post-Revolution Russia and McCarthy-era America, among others. Antliff's latest will prove lively and thought-provoking work for art students and scholars. 16 color plates.
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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 20070801)
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 20070825)
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 20071001)
Allan Antliff is becoming an important and productive writer on anarchist history.
―Seven Oaks Magazine (Seven Oaks Magazine 20071003)
A thoughtful discussion of art's potential as a conduit for revolution and meaningful social change.
―Midwest Book Review (Midwest Book Review 20080201)
[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 )
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 )
Passionate and readable .... Antliff manages to produce an interesting and konwledgeable commentary.
―Nexus (Nexus )
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 )
