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Books in Progress
- Modernism and Anarchism. "MODERNISM AND . . ." Series Palgrave/Macmillan,
forthcoming 2012. (under contract; in progress)
Abstract:
This book will briefly outline the ideas of major anarchist theorists and their impact on visual artists and allied writers and critics across Europe, with special focus on France, which was a locus of anarchist modernism in the period roughly from 1850 to1950. The term ‘anarchism’ will be used historically, not metaphorically. Emphasis will be on how anarchist theory and praxis worked together historically within modernist movements in the visual and propaganda arts and how modernity was engaged and critiqued in the context of social change and political events in this hundred-year period. Anarchism as a movement rejected the authority of the state and all traditional hierarchies, looking to the future for a just and balanced social order. Anarchists critiqued the economic injustices and labour conditions of 19th and 20th-century society, industrial degradation of the natural environment, and gender inequality. They mounted support for the first environmental, feminist and sexual liberationist movements at the turn of the century, and they remain an important part of the anti-globalization and ecology movements in the present. Most related modernist art movements challenged the traditional hierarchy of media, hence attention will be given where appropriate to painting, sculpture, collage, prints, photography, film, architecture, literature and theatre.
The introductory chapter will outline the anarchist theories of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Petr Kropotkin, Mikhail Bakunin, Sergei Nechaev, Elisée Reclus, and Jean Grave, with special attention to their views on the role of art and artists in the revolutionary process and/or the new society. Subsequent chapters will look at a variety of European art movements, examining the ways that anarchist theory shaped the art and aesthetics of those committed—permanently or temporarily—to the development of an ‘anarchist’ art, a list that includes many key figures in any history of modernism including Gustave Courbet, Camille Pissarro, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Wassily Kandinsky, and Kasimir Malevich, among others.
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