Anarchism and the arts
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The French novelist Émile Zola objected to Proudhon advocating freedom for all in the name of anarchism, but then placing stipulations on artists as to what they should depict in their works.[3] This opened up a division in thinking on anarchist art which is still apparent today, with some anarchist writers and artists advocating a view that art should be propagandistic and used to further the anarchist cause, and others that anarchism should free the artist from the requirements to serve a patron and master, allowing the artist to pursue their own interests and agendas. In recent years the first of these approaches has been argued by writers such as Patricia Leighten[4] and the second by Michael Paraskos.[3]
Significant writers on the relationship between art and anarchism include Proudhon,
For some writers, art and anarchism artists would not disappear as they would continue to provide an anarchist society with a space in which to continue to imagine new ways of understanding and organising reality as well as a space in which to face possible fears.[6] This is similar to Noël Carroll's theory of the function of horror stories and films in current society: "Art-horror is the price we are willing to pay for the revelation of that which is impossible and unknown, of that which violates our conceptual schema."[7]
Overview
About anarchism and the arts, historian David Goodway wrote:
There can be no doubt that one type of intellectual has been consistently drawn to anarchism, placing a premium on absolute freedom and non-interference in their personal and social lives, and belonging, like (Herbert) Read himself, to the artistic and literary avant-gardes. Significant clusters of anarchist painters and writers existed in pre-1914 Italy, New York before and during the First World War and, most impressive of all, the France of the 1880s and 1890s, where the Neo-Impressionists – Camille and Lucien Pissarro, Paul Signac, most probably the enigmatic Georges Seurat – and the Symbolist writers, including one of the greatest poets, Stéphane Mallarmé, all consisted of militant anarchists or sympathizers. In Bohemia the fact that Jaroslav Hašek had been a member of anarchist groups and worked on anarchist journals helps to explain the subversive genius of The Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk; and Franz Kafka had attended anarchist meetings in Prague, gaining considerable familiarity with anarchist writers and personalities, and actually mentioning Bakunin and Kropotkin in his diary. The German actor, Ret Marut, fleeing from Munich in 1919, recreated himself in Mexico as the still insufficiently appreciated novelist, B. Traven.[8]
Anarchism had a significant influence on French Symbolism of the late 19th century, such as that of Stéphane Mallarmé, who was quoted as saying "Je ne sais pas d'autre bombe, qu'un livre." (I know of no bomb other than a book.) Its ideas infiltrated the cafes and cabarets of turn-of-the-century Paris (see the Drunken Boat #2).
Many American artists of the early 20th century came under the influence of anarchist ideas, while others embraced anarchism as an ideology. The Ashcan School of American realism included anarchist artists, as well as artists such as Rockwell Kent (1882–1971) and George Bellows (1882–1925) who were influenced by anarchist ideas. Abstract expressionism also included anarchist artists such as Mark Rothko and painters such as Jackson Pollock, who had adopted radical ideas during his experience as a muralist for the Works Progress Administration. Pollock's father had also been a Wobbly.
David Weir has argued in Anarchy and Culture that anarchism only had some success in the sphere of cultural avant-gardism because of its failure as a political movement; cognizant of anarchism's claims to overcome the barrier between art and political activism, he nevertheless suggests that this is not achieved in reality. Weir suggests that for the "ideologue" it might be possible to adapt "aesthetics to politics", but that "from the perspective of the poet" a solution might be to "adapt the politics to the aesthetics". He identifies this latter strategy with anarchism, on account of its individualism. Weir has also suggested that "the contemporary critical strategy of aestheticizing politics" among Marxists such as Fredric Jameson results from the demise of Marxism as a state ideology. "The situation whereby ideology attempts to operate outside of politics has already pointed Marxism toward postmodernist culture, just as anarchism moved into the culture of modernism when it ceased to have political validity".[10]
Late 20th century examples of anarchism and the arts include the
In the 1990s, anarchists became involved in the mail art movement – "art which uses the postal service in some way". This relates to the involvement of many anarchists in the zine movement. Some contemporary anarchists make art in the form of flyposters, stencils, and radical puppets.
Visual art
19th-century realism
Visual art was considered one of the most important aspects of anarchist activity from the birth of anarchism, with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon writing on his friend and contemporary Gustave Courbet in the essay "Du Principe de l'art", published 1865, that 'The task of art is to warn us, to praise us, to teach us, to make us blush by confronting us with the mirror of our own conscience.' Courbet also went on to paint Proudhon on several occasions.[11] Similarly Courbet wrote in 1850:
In our so very civilized society it is necessary for me to live the life of a savage. I must be free even of governments. The people have my sympathies, I must address myself to them directly.[12]
Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism
Among the
Cubism and futurism
Patricia Leighten has shown that Spanish
Though typically not associated with
The
Surrealism
An anarchist world…a surrealist world: they are the same.
Surrealism was both an artistic and political movement aims at the liberation of the human being from the constraints of capitalism, the state, and the cultural forces that limit the reign of the imagination. From its origins individualist anarchists like Florent Fels opposed it with his magazine Action: Cahiers individualistes de philosophie et d'art. However faced with the popularity of surrealism Fels' magazine closed in 1922.[21] The movement developed in France in the wake of World War I with André Breton (1896–1966) as its main theorist and poet. Originally it was tied closely to the Communist Party. Later, Breton, a close friend of Leon Trotsky, broke with the Communist Party and embraced anarchism, even writing in the publication of the French Anarchist Federation.
By the end of
Post-war modernism
In the period after
Contemporary art
In contemporary art anarchism can take diverse forms, from
Music
A number of performers and artists have either been inspired by anarchist concepts, or have used the medium of music and sound in order to promote
Punk rock is one movement that has taken much inspiration from the often potent imagery and symbolism associated with anarchism and Situationist rhetoric, if not always the political theory. In the past few decades, anarchism has been closely associated with the punk rock movement, and has grown because of that association (whatever other effects that has had on the movement and the prejudiced pictures of it). Indeed, many anarchists were introduced to the ideas of Anarchism through that symbolism and the anti-authoritarian sentiment which many punk songs expressed.
Paul Gailiunas and his late wife Helen Hill co-wrote the anarchist song "Emma Goldman", which was performed by the band Piggy: The Calypso Orchestra of the Maritimes and released on their 1999 album Don't Stop the Calypso: Songs of Love and Liberation.[25] After Helen and Paul moved to New Orleans, Paul started a new band called The Troublemakers and re-released the song "Emma Goldman" on their 2004 album Here Come The Troublemakers.[25][26] Proclaiming the motto "It's your duty as a citizen to troublemake," other songs on the album include "International Flag Burning Day."[27][28]
The Charter of the Forest Archived 2020-02-19 at the Wayback Machine, which invented the genre of "Read-Opera,"[29] is a combination poetic-musical work which espouses anarchist ideas of opposition to hierarchy, as well as being highly influenced by a Tolstoyan commitment to nonviolence.[30]
Artists and artworks inspired by anarchism
Visual arts
Comics and sequential art
|
Music
- Georges Brassens
- Léo Ferré
- Étienne Roda-Gil
- La Makhnovtchina[31]
Prose
Poetry
|
|
Television and films
- Julian Beck
- Actor, director and painter who founded "The Living Theatre" with Judith Malina
- Kevin Brownlow
- Luis Buñuel
- In particular, his documentary Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan
- In particular, his documentary
- Peter Coyote
- Martin B. Duberman
- Mother Earth: An Epic Drama of Emma Goldman's Life
- Jon Jost
- Nelly Kaplan
- Adonis Kyrou
- Judith Malina
- Actress who was an integral part of the "Living Theater" with her husband
- Godfrey Reggio
- Jean Vigo
- Peter Watkins
- Yoshishige Yoshida
- Directed Noe Itō
- Directed
- Yu Yong-Sik
- Directed Anarchists, about an underground cell of insurrectionary anarchists
Theatre/drama
- Carol Bolt
- Red Emma: Queen of the Anarchists (1974)
- Martin B. Duberman
- Mother Earth: An Epic Drama of Emma Goldman's Life (1991)
- Fredy Perlman
- Illyria Street Commune
- Tom Stoppard
- Howard Zinn
- Emma: A Play in Two Acts about Emma Goldman, American Anarchist (2002)
See also
Footnotes and citations
- ^ Donald Drew Egbert, Social Radicalism and the Arts (New York: Alfred J. Knopf, 1970) p. 714f
- ^ Joshua Charles Taylor, Nineteenth-century Theories of Art (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987) p.384f
- ^ a b Michael Paraskos, Four Essays on Art and Anarchism (Mitcham: Orage Press, 2015) p.26f
- ^ Patricia Leighten, ’Réveil anarchiste: Salon Painting, Political Satire, Modernist Art’, in Josh MacPhee and Erik Reuland (eds.), Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority (Oakland: AK Press, 2007) p. 39
- ^ John Farquhar McLay, Anarchism and Art (Glasgow: Autonomy Press, 1982) p.10
- ^ Michael Paraskos, Four Essays on Art and Anarchism (Mitcham: Orage Press, 2015)
- ^ Noel Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart (New York: Routledge, 1990) p. 186
- Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool University Press. 2006 p. 9
- Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool University Press. 2006 p. 11
- ISBN 1-55849-084-1.
- ^ Alan Bowness, 'Courbet's Proudhon' in The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 120, No. 900, 1978, p.123f
- ISBN 978-0-15-134260-0.
- ^ Kristen Erickson, 'The Art of Orovida: Looking beyond the Pissarro Family Legacy', in Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Autumn, 1994 - Winter, 1995), p.14
- ^ See Michael Paraskos, Four Essays on Art and Anarchism (London: Orage Press, 2015) p.27f)
- ^ See Robert L. Herbert and Eugenia W. Herbert, 'Artists and Anarchism: Unpublished Letters of Pissarro, Signac and Others' in The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 102, No. 692 (Nov., 1960), p. 472f
- ^ See Anne Dymond, 'A Politicized Pastoral: Signac and the Cultural Geography of Mediterranean France' in The Art Bulletin, vol. 85, No. 2 (Jun., 2003), p. 353f
- ^ Patricia Leighten, 'Réveil anarchiste: Salon Painting, Political Satire, Modernist Art', in Josh MacPhee and Erik Reuland (eds.), Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority (Oakland: AK Press, 2007) p. 39
- ^ Michael Paraskos, Four Essays on Art and Anarchism (London: Orage Press, 2015) p. 28)
- ^ The Fourth Dimension and Futurism: A Politicized Space | Art Bulletin, The | Find Articles at BNET.com
- ^ Novatore: una biografia Archived 2011-07-22 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ DadaComp. "DADA & Modernist Magazines". DADA Companion. Archived from the original on 22 August 2016. Retrieved 16 August 2016.
- ^ a b "1919-1950: The politics of Surrealism by Nick Heath". Libcom.org. Retrieved 2009-12-26.
- ^ Donald Drew Egbert, Social Radicalism and the Arts (New York: Alfred J. Knopf, 1970) p. 714f.
- ^ See Jonathan Purkis and James Bowen, Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004) p. 221
- ^ a b John Clark (14 May 2007). "Remembering Helen Hill: A New Orleans community comes together after the murder of a friend and activist". Divergences.
- ^ The Troublemakers. Emma Goldman. YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12.
- ^ Louisiana Music Factory. "Here Come The Troublemakers". Archived from the original on 2007-12-11.
- ^ The Troublemakers. International Flag Burning Day. YouTube. Archived from the original on 2011-09-24.
- ^ "About the Read-Opera". The Charter of the Forest. 2019-09-16. Retrieved 2020-01-04.
- ^ "The Charter of the Forest". The Charter of the Forest. Archived from the original on 2020-02-19. Retrieved 2020-01-04.
- ^ La Makhnovtchina hymn lyrics. Retrieved June 1, 2008.
- ^ Isaac was a non-anarchist, his two works, Discourse on the "Tachanka" and Old man Makhno being anti-anarchist polemics. Notes on the History of Anarchism in literature: a chronology Katesharpleylibrary.net Retrieved October 6, 2007
- ^ ISBN 1-57003-113-4.
- ^ "'And then There Were None' by Eric Frank Russell".
- ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). www.arthursbookshelf.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 July 2011. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ Makhno’s Philosophers Archived 2009-07-10 at the Portuguese Web Archive republished by in KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library #9. John Manifold himself was a non-anarchist member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Further reading
- Klaus, H. Gustav; Knight, Stephen Thomas (2005). 'To Hell with Culture': Anarchism and Twentieth-Century British Literature. Lincoln: University of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-1898-3.
- Sonn, Richard (1989). Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin-De-Siècle France. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-4175-5.
- Shantz, Jeff (2010). A Creative Passion: Anarchism and Culture. London: Cambridge Scholars Press. ISBN 978-1-4438-2334-0.
- Antliff, Allan (2001). Anarchist Modernism: Art, Politics, and the First American Avant-Garde. Chicago: ISBN 0-226-02103-3.
- Macphee, Josh; Reuland, Erik (2007). Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority. Stirling: ISBN 978-1-904859-32-1.
- Antliff, Allan (2007). Anarchy and Art: From the Paris Commune to the Fall of the Berlin Wall. ISBN 978-1-55152-218-0.
- Bruns, Gerald (2006). On the Anarchy of Poetry and Philosophy: A Guide for the Unruly. ISBN 0-8232-2633-6.
- Blechman, Max (1994). Drunken Boat: Art, Rebellion, Anarchy. ISBN 978-1-57027-002-4.
- Shantz, Jeff (2011). Against All Authority: Anarchism and the Literary Imagination. ISBN 978-1-84540-237-2.
External links
- "Anarchism and the arts". Spunk Library.
- Anarchism, Art, & Critical Mass
- Anarchism & Science Fiction, a bibliography of works of science fiction which feature or were inspired by a theme of anarchism.
- When Gendarme Sleeps – Anarchist Zine of Poetry
- Libertarian Communist Library Arts and Culture Archive
- Notes on the history of anarchism in literature: a chronology
- Parser: New Poetry and Poetics, a journal of anarchist poetry and poetics
- People's history of Culture, a working class and anarchist cultural history page
- Anarchism and Film, a database of anarchist films created by Santiago Juan-Navarro and hosted by ChristieBooks