Allan W. Antliff (born 1957) is an anarchist activist, art critic, author and founding member of the Toronto Anarchist Free School (now Anarchist U) who has written extensively on the topics of anarchism and art in North America since the 1980s. [1] [2] [3]
Since 2003 Antliff has held the Canada Research Chair in Art History at the University of Victoria, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on modern and contemporary art. [4] His research interests include dada, contemporary art, anarchist history and political theory, and his graduate seminars include "20th-Century Anarchism and Avant-Garde Art"; "New York Dada" and "American Modernism Between the Wars". In addition to teaching art history, Antliff co-edits the Alternative Press Review , serves as art editor for Anarchist Studies , edited the volume Only a Beginning: An Anarchist Anthology (1998) and has written two scholarly books; Anarchist Modernism: Art, Politics and the First American Avant-Garde (2001) and Art and Anarchy: From the Paris Commune to the Fall of the Berlin Wall (2007). [5] [6]
He also is the Director of the Anarchist Archive at the University of Victoria as well. [4]
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including nation-states, and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, this reading of anarchism is placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, usually described as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement.
Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Although usually contrasted with social anarchism, both individualist and social anarchism have influenced each other. Mutualism, an economic theory sometimes considered a synthesis of communism and property, has been considered individualist anarchism and other times part of social anarchism. Many anarcho-communists regard themselves as radical individualists, seeing anarcho-communism as the best social system for the realization of individual freedom. Some anarcho-capitalists claim anarcho-capitalism is part of the individualist anarchist tradition, while others disagree and claim individualist anarchism is only part of the socialist movement and part of the libertarian socialist tradition. Economically, while European individualist anarchists are pluralists who advocate anarchism without adjectives and synthesis anarchism, ranging from anarcho-communist to mutualist economic types, most American individualist anarchists of the 19th century advocated mutualism, a libertarian socialist form of market socialism, or a free-market socialist form of classical economics. Individualist anarchists are opposed to property that violates the entitlement theory of justice, that is, gives privilege due to unjust acquisition or exchange, and thus is exploitative, seeking to "destroy the tyranny of capital, — that is, of property" by mutual credit.
In the arts and in literature, the term avant-garde identifies a genre of art, an experimental work of art, and the experimental artist who created the work of art, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artistic establishment of the time. The military metaphor of an advance guard identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style, form, and subject-matter challenge the artistic and aesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time; thus how the artists who created the anti-novel and Surrealism were ahead of their times.
The Squamish Five were a group of self-styled "urban guerrillas" active in Canada during the early 1980s. Their chosen name was Direct Action. The five were Ann Hansen, Brent Taylor, Juliet Caroline Belmas, Doug Stewart and Gerry Hannah.
Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.
Anarchists have employed certain symbols for their cause, including most prominently the circle-A and the black flag. Anarchist cultural symbols have been prevalent in popular culture since around the turn of the 21st century, concurrent with the anti-globalization movement. The punk subculture has also had a close association with anarchist symbolism.
Lev Chernyi was a Russian individualist anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. In 1917, Chernyi was released from his political imprisonment by the Imperial Russian regime, and swiftly became one of the leading figures in Russian anarchism. After strongly denouncing the new Bolshevik government in various anarchist publications and joining several underground resistance movements, Chernyi was arrested by the Cheka on a charge of counterfeiting and in 1921 was executed without trial.
Anarchism has long had an association with the arts, particularly with visual art, music and literature. This can be dated back to the start of anarchism as a named political concept, and the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon on the French realist painter Gustave Courbet. In an essay on Courbet of 1857 Proudhon had set out a principle for art, which he saw in the work of Courbet, that it should show the real lives of the working classes and the injustices working people face at the hands of the bourgeoisie.
Charles Bufe, better known as Chaz Bufe, is a contemporary American anarchist author. Bufe writes on a wide variety of topics, and has published 16 books, most under the See Sharp Press imprint but one ("Godless") was published by PM Press and another by AK Press.
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. Somewhat paradoxically, anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage point of art. The term is associated with the Dada movement and is generally accepted as attributable to Marcel Duchamp pre-World War I around 1914, when he began to use found objects as art. It was used to describe revolutionary forms of art. The term was used later by the Conceptual artists of the 1960s to describe the work of those who claimed to have retired altogether from the practice of art, from the production of works which could be sold.
The Little Review, was an American avant-garde literary magazine founded by Margaret Anderson in Chicago's historic Fine Arts Building, published literary and art work from 1914 to May 1929. With the help of Jane Heap and Ezra Pound, Anderson created a magazine that featured a wide variety of transatlantic modernists and cultivated many early examples of experimental writing and art. Many contributors were American, British, Irish, and French. In addition to publishing a variety of international literature, The Little Review printed early examples of surrealist artwork and Dadaism. The magazine's most well known work was the serialization of James Joyce's Ulysses.
Philosophical anarchism is an anarchist school of thought which focuses on intellectual criticism of authority, especially political power, and the legitimacy of governments. The American anarchist and socialist Benjamin Tucker coined the term philosophical anarchism to distinguish peaceful evolutionary anarchism from revolutionary variants. Although philosophical anarchism does not necessarily imply any action or desire for the elimination of authority, philosophical anarchists do not believe that they have an obligation or duty to obey any authority or conversely that the state or any individual has a right to command. Philosophical anarchism is a component especially of individualist anarchism.
The following is a list of terms specific to anarchists. Anarchism is a political and social movement which advocates voluntary association in opposition to authoritarianism and hierarchy.
Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas is a three-volume anthology of anarchist writings edited by historian Robert Graham. The anthology is published by Black Rose Books. Each selection is introduced by Graham, placing each author and selection in their historical and ideological context. The focus of the anthology is on the origins and development of anarchist ideas; it is not a documentary history of the world's anarchist movements, although the selections are geographically diverse.
John Frederick Mowbray-Clarke (1869–1953) was an American sculptor specializing in medals. Mowbray-Clarke was one of the organizers of the influential 1913 Armory Show in New York.
Mary Horgan Mowbray-Clarke (1874–1962) was an American art critic, writer, publisher, instructor, landscape architect, and the proprietor of The Sunwise Turn, a hotbed of artistic activity and anarchist political thought in New York City during the nineteen-teens and twenties. She was also the wife of John Frederick Mowbray-Clarke, a sculptor who helped organize of the influential 1913 Armory Show exhibition of modern art.
Charles Lewis Hind (1862–1927) was a British journalist, writer, editor, art critic, and art historian.
Self-managed social centers, also known as autonomous social centers, are self-organized community centers in which anti-authoritarians put on voluntary activities. These autonomous spaces, often in multi-purpose venues affiliated with anarchism, can include bicycle workshops, infoshops, libraries, free schools, meeting spaces, free stores and concert venues. They often become political actors in their own right.
Adolf Wolff (1883–1944) was a visual artist, anarchist, and socialist based in New York City.