NO!art
NO!art was a radical anti-art movement launched in New York in 1959 by Boris Lurie, Sam Goodman and Stanley Fisher, who organized confrontational exhibitions at the March Gallery; the movement took its name from their 1963 NO show at the Gallery Gertrude Stein. Setting themselves against both Abstract Expressionism and the rising Pop Art, they made deliberately crude, scatological and pornographic assemblages and collages attacking consumerism, racism, imperialism and the art market, while returning obsessively to the Holocaust - Lurie survived the Riga ghetto and the camps. The critic Harold Rosenberg called it 'Pop with venom added'. The original run ended around 1964, but the movement was revived after 1999 and led from New York and Berlin.
Defining characteristics
- Deliberately crude, unfinished surfaces: raw materials, refuse and found objects left untransformed
- Provocative collage splicing pornographic pin-up imagery with Holocaust and atrocity photographs
- Scatological, abject subject matter wielded as a shock against good taste
- Text and the shouted word 'NO' used as a blunt graphic element
- Assemblages of mass-produced junk attacking consumer culture rather than celebrating it
- Crowded, unpolished presentation that refuses decorative finish or market polish
Key figures
- Boris Lurie (1924-2008) — Co-founder and polemical core; survivor of the Riga ghetto and camps whose collages confront the Holocaust
- Sam Goodman (fl. 1959-1964) — Co-founder who staged the group's confrontational exhibitions at the March Gallery
- Stanley Fisher (fl. 1959-1964) — Co-founder and co-organizer of the March Gallery exhibitions
Example works
- Railroad Collage — Boris Lurie (1959)
Sources
- NO!art - Wikipedia encyclopedia
- Boris Lurie - Wikipedia encyclopedia