NO!art is a radical avant-garde anti-art movement started in New York in 1959. Its founders sought to deliver a shock to the complacent consumerist society around them. [1]
The movement was initiated by Boris Lurie, Sam Goodman and Stanley Fisher who had come together to organise exhibitions at the March Gallery. They gave the name NO!Art to the movement on the occasion of their show at the Gallery Gertrude Stein. They set themselves against the contemporary trends in Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art in art, and used their work to attack Fascism, racism and imperialism in politics.
The NO!art exhibitions bore titles such as the Doom Show, the Involvement Show, the No Show and the Vulgar Show. They were often scatological in theme with one exhibition, the 1964 No Sculptures/Shit Show featuring works resembling piles of excrement. [2] The Holocaust was another recurrent theme and the artists sometime provocatively referred to their work as "Jew Art." [3]
In his essay, “Bull by the Horns” art critic Harold Rosenberg wrote “NO!art reflects the mixture of crap and crime with which the mass media floods the mind of our time. It is Pop with venom added.” [4]
Since 1999, The NO!art was led by Dietmar Kirves (headquarters Berlin), and Clayton Patterson (headquarters New York). Since 2024, after the loss of Dietmar Kirves ( headquarters east), the "headquarters east" is represented by LST, Lars Schubert, in Vacarisses, Spain. Members are Rocco Armento, Isser Aronovici, Enrico Baj, Paolo Baratella, Herb Brown, Ronaldo Brunet, Guenter Brus, Al D'Arcangelo, Aleksey Dayen, Frank-Kirk Ehm-Marks, Erró, Klaus Fabricius, Charles Gatewood, Paul Georges, Jochen Gerz, Dorothie Gillespie, Esther Morgenstern Gilman, Amikam Goldman, Leon Golub, Blalla W. Hallmann, Harry Hass, Allan Kaprow, Kommissar Hjuler (Detlev Hjuler) and Mama Baer (Andrea Katharina, Ingeborg Hjuler), Yayoi Kusama, Konstantin K. Kuzminsky, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Martin Levitt, Suzanne Long (Harriet Wood), LST, Lars Schubert,
Enzo Mastrangelo, Stu Mead, Peter Meseck, Lil Picard, Leonid Pinchevsky, Bernard Rancillac, Francis Salles, Naomi Tereza Salmon, Reinhard Scheibner, Bruno Schleinstein, Dominik Stahlberg, Michelle Stuart, Aldo Tambellini, Seth Tobocman, Jean Toche, Toyo Tsuchiya, Wolf Vostell, Friedrich Wall, Mathilda Wolf, Natalia E. Woytasik, Miron Zownir. [5]
Patrick Joseph Caulfield,, was an English painter and printmaker known for his bold canvases, which often incorporated elements of photorealism within a pared-down scene. Examples of his work are Pottery and Still Life Ingredients.
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. Born in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, he moved to the United States in 1926, becoming a US citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter Elaine Fried.
Elaine Marie Catherine de Kooning was an Abstract Expressionist and Figurative Expressionist painter in the post-World War II era. She wrote extensively on the art of the period and was an editorial associate for Art News magazine.
Steven Donald Dalachinsky was an American downtown New York City poet, active in the music, art, and free jazz scenes. He wrote poetry for most of his life and read frequently at Michael Dorf's club the Knitting Factory, the Poetry Project and the Vision Festival, an Avant-jazz festival held annually on the Lower East Side of New York City. Dalachinsky also read his works in Japan, France and Germany. He collaborated with many musicians, writing liner notes for artists: William Parker, Susie Ibarra, Matthew Shipp, Joe McPhee, Nicola Hein, Dave Liebman, Roy Campbell, Daniel Carter, Joëlle Léandre, Kommissar Hjuler, Thurston Moore, Sabir Mateen, Jim O'Rourke, and Mat Maneri
David Rosenberg is a French art curator and author, specialized in modern and contemporary art styles.
The 9th Street Art Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture is the official title artist Franz Kline hand-lettered onto the poster he designed for the Ninth Street Show. Now considered historic, the artist-led exhibition marked the formal debut of Abstract Expressionism, and the first American art movement with international influence. The School of Paris, long the headquarters of the global art market, typically launched new movements, so there was both financial and cultural fall-out when all the excitement was suddenly emanating from New York. The postwar New York avant-garde, artists like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, would soon become "art stars," commanding large sums and international attention. The Ninth Street Show marked their "stepping-out," and that of nearly 75 other artists, including Harry Jackson, Helen Frankenthaler, Michael Goldberg, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Robert De Niro Sr., John Ferren, Philip Guston, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Ad Reinhardt, David Smith, Milton Resnick, Joop Sanders, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and many others who were then mostly unknown to an art establishment that ignored experimental art without a ready market.
Croatian art of the 20th century, that is visual arts within the boundaries of today's Croatia, can be divided into modern art up to the Second World War, and contemporary art afterwards.
Boris Lurie was an American artist and writer. He co-founded the NO!Art movement which calls for socially and politically involved art that would resist and combat the forces of the market. His controversial work, often related to the Holocaust, has frequently irritated critics and curators.
Kommissar Hjuler works as a sound recordist in the field of Noise and Post-industrial music, visual artist, film maker and police officer at Flensburg, a town on the German border with Denmark. He often works together with his wife Mama Baer as Kommissar Hjuler und Frau. As self-taught artist he began making music in 1999 and visual art in 2006. He is considered to work in the field of neo dada, whereas his output also contains elements of fluxus, art brut.
Clayton Patterson is a Canadian-born artist, photographer, videographer and folk historian. Since moving to New York City in 1979, his work has focused almost exclusively on documenting the art, life and times of the Lower East Side in Manhattan.
Mikhail Pavlovich Trufanov was a Soviet Russian painter and Honored Artist of the Russian Federation. He lived and worked in Leningrad and is regarded as one of the brightest representatives of the Leningrad school of painting, most famous for his portrait paintings.
Dietmar Kirves.
Leonardo Marcos is a multidisciplinary artist; he was born in Paris, son of Spanish political refugees. Educated in music and movie-making, he creates his works in diverse disciplines as an author, photographer, movie director, stage director and composer. His creations are always articulated around the theme of poetry.
Aldo Tambellini was an Italian-American artist. He pioneered electronic intermedia, and was a painter, sculptor, and poet. He died at age 90, in November 2020.
Alexander Bogen was a Polish-Israeli visual artist, a decorated leader of partisans during World War II, a key player in 20th century Yiddish culture, and one of the trailblazers for art education and Artists' associations in the emerging state of Israel.
Vaso Katraki was a Greek painter and engraver. She was known for her passionate depictions of the sufferings of the Greek people during and after World War II. In 1967 she was exiled to a barren island by the military junta on the day that it took power. She started with wood engraving, then developed an original and very unusual technique of sandstone engraving.
Rocco Armento was an American sculptor, painter, and member of the NO!art movement. His postwar abstractions were influenced by Picasso, Giacometti, and Marini. He lived in Woodstock, NY in his self-built home with a geodesic dome studio.
Werner Rosenberg (1913-1988) known as Véro, was a German-born French photographer and photojournalist.
Esther Lurie was an Israeli painter.
Avner Avraham is a former Mossad official artist, journalist, deputy editor of the "Intelligence Heritage Center" magazine, curator of spy and art exhibitions, curator, and producer of spy films, founder and owner of the international lecturer agency 'Spy Legends', and 'Women Speakers Online'.