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Title: Art as a Weapon
Author: Anarchist Federation
Date: 1996
Language: en
Topics: art, creativity, culture, Organise!
Source: Retrieved on May 13, 2013 from https://web.archive.org/web/20130513060402/http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue40/art_as_a_weapon_part1.html][web.archive.org]] and [[https://web.archive.org/web/20130513012230/http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue41/art_as_a_weapon_part2.html][web.archive.org]] and [[https://web.archive.org/web/20130516072625/http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue43/war.html
Notes: Published in Organise! Issues 40, 41 and 43.

Anarchist Federation

Art as a Weapon

Part 1

THE CONCEPT OF counter-culture is essential to any understanding of

anarchism as a movement of total opposition to authoritarian society.

Not simply because anarchists reject the cruder forms of economic

determinism, but also because anarchists want to extend the social

struggle into all those areas of life in which capital is dominant. By

“counter-culture” anarchists do not just mean an “alternative” culture,

but one which challenges and confronts capitalism and authoritarianism

in a way in which purely political and economic movements are unable to

do.

Art is one of the many cultural forms in which it is possible to

identify a distinctly anarchist approach. The way in which people see

society, the way in which we express ideas and generate new modes of

expression are essential to the development of critical opposition. Art,

through its re-interpretation of reality helps to focus that opposition.

Many prominent artists have been closely involved with the anarchist

movement, contributing leaflets, writing articles for the anarchist

press, illustrating pamphlets, books and posters and their art has been

merely one aspect of their involvement. Many anarchists have (the

reverse side of the coin) been artists, in the form of illustrations,

cartoons, montages and posters which have often been anonymous, but no

less a part of anarchist artistic creation for that. Anarchist

contribution to art theory has also been important, ranging from

Kropotkin’s ideal version of socially integrated art, and his

exhortation of the artists:

“Narrate for us in your vivid style or in your fervent pictures the

titanic struggle of the masses against their oppressors; inflame young

hearts with the beautiful breath of revolution.” (Peter Kropotkin:

Paroles d’un Revolte)

to Herbert Read’s development of a theory of art as an agent for social

change.

Read originally saw a need for an artistic elite but soon dropped the

idea in favour of the concept of “every person a special kind of

artist”, elaborating his views in Education Through Art, in which

everybody’s artistic abilities should be matured to contribute to the

richness of collective life. Attacking the repression embedded in

contemporary education, Read advocated that art be placed at the centre

of education to promote creativity, independence and strength of

character.

Anarcho-syndicalism has provided one of the clearest practical

expression of art’s social potential. Fernand Pelloutier, activist and

theoretician of anarcho-syndicalism, believed that artists should

directly join the class struggle. To art he gave the task of destroying

the myths on which capitalism rested, and inspiring revolt instead of

submission:

“That which, better than all the instinctive explosions of wrath, can

lead to a social revolution is the awakening of the mind to scorn and

prejudices and laws and this awakening art alone can accomplish.”

(Fernand Pelloutier:L’Art et la Revolte, 1895)

Pelloutier placed considerable emphasis on the cultural role of the

Bourse du Travail that was the pivotal organisational form of French

anarcho-syndicalism. In Spain the anarchist “ateneo” provided a similar

social focus for revolutionary art. The anarchist poster artist Carles

Fontsere had described how the autonomy of a collectively organised

artist studio linked to the Spanish CNT enabled artists to respond

rapidly and spontaneously to the military revolt which triggered the

Spanish Revolution, so that:

“the revolution iconography of the posters which were plastered with

amazing rapidity over the walls of the troubled city could be seen by

all, panicking the bourgeois and revolutionary combatant alike, as an

unmistakable symbol of a popular desire to crush fascism.” (Carles

Fontsere: “Catalan posters of the Spanish Civil War” in Non Pasaran!

1986)

Fontsere goes on to point out that these posters were the “work of

painters for whom the poster was an avant garde art form, with social

value as a means of mass communication in tune with the spirit of the

age”.

Critical Edge

For art to retain its critical edge there is a need to continually

re-interpret the world, invent new concepts and ways of seeing, and to

challenge the existing boundaries of establishment art. Without this

capacity art and culture fall apart. A continuing struggle exists

between change and tradition in art, and it is in this area that new

ideas and values are generated. Here also the anarchist artists are

usually to be found, their social radicalism and their artistic

radicalism reinforcing each other. Artists identified with anarchism

have usually been in the forefront of rebellious tendencies within art.

This includes artists such as the French anarchist, Paul Signac who

wrote:

“The anarchist painter is not he who does anarchist paintings, but he

who without caring for money, without desire for recompense, struggles

with all his individuality against bourgeois conventions.”

Courbet, the founder of realism, Seurat and his revolutionary theory of

pointillism, Kupka, the pioneer of abstract art, Munch who synthesized

symbolism and expressionism, Kandinsky, Camille Pissarro and even for a

period Picasso, Frans Masereel, the Belgium Expressionist, are just a

few of the many artists who have been involved with the anarchist

movement, and who have utilised anarchist concepts in their art, their

revolutionary politics informing and underpinning their artistic

radicalism.

Indeed some writers such as Renato Poggioli have suggested a basic

identity between the artistic avant-garde and anarchism:

“The only omnipresent or recurring political ideology within the

avant-garde is the least political or the most anti-political of all:

libertarianism and anarchism” (Renato Poggioli: The Theory of the

Avant-Garde, 1968)

Part 2

Although anarchist artists have come from a variety of countries and

artistic schools, the anarchist aesthetic which unites them has three

major characteristics, succinctly described by Michael Scrivener:

“(1) an uncompromising insistence upon total freedom for the artist, and

an avant-garde contempt for conservative art; (2) a critique of elitist,

alienated art and a visionary alternative in which art becomes

integrated with everyday life; (3) art as social change — that is since

art is an experience, it is a way to define and redefine human needs,

altering social-political structures accordingly.” (Michael Scrivener:

An Introduction to Anarchist Aesthetic)

The catalyst for the continuing alliance between art and anarchism has

frequently been provided by the anarchist periodicals. In France,

magazines such as La Revolte and Les Temps Nouveaux, both edited by the

anarcho-communist Jean Grave, Pere Peinard, an anarchist weekly written

entirely in slang, and edited by anarcho-syndicalist Emile Pouget, and

La Feuille, edited by the flamboyant individual Zo d’Axa, all succeed in

attracting the most innovative and class conscious artists, including

Maximilien Luce, Paul Signac, Grandjouan, Kupka and others. In Germany,

Franz Pfemfert’s Die Aktion combined the revolutionary nature of

expressionist art and literature with the revolutionary writings of

Muhsam and Bakunin, and a strong anti-militarist sentiment, to produce

one of the most influential and political art magazines of the 20^(th)

Century. Among many artists who illustrated Die Aktion was Franz

Seiwart, who provided graphics to Ret Marut for use in the clandestine

Ziegelbrenner. Marut edited Die Ziegelbrenner while hiding from the

Freiekorps, having narrowly escaped execution for his role in the Munich

Republic of Councils, 1919, and is better known for the many novels he

wrote as B. Traven.

In the Netherlands, Bakunin’s biographer Arthur Muller Lehning edited a

seminal I-10 Internazionale Revue, which treated art, science and

philosophy as key factors in the evolution of all political end economic

situations. Informed by Lehning’s anarchist background I-10 provided the

artistic avant-garde of the late 1920’s with a vehicle for international

communication attracting contributors such as Walter Benjamin, Piet

Mondrian, Kathe Kollwitz, Kandinsky, Kurt Schwitters, El Lissitsky and

Malevich. Other members of the editorial collective included the

architect J.J.P. Oud, and the Hungarian artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Lehning summarized the policy of the review:

“The charter and meaning of this magazine are not set forth by any dogma

stating what a new culture shall or will be, but rather a illustration

of how each expression of contemporary life becomes aware of its own

choices” (I-10, issue no 13, 1928)

Working Alliance

It is interesting to note Malevich’s continually connection with the

anarchist press, as during the Russian Revolution he had originally

written about his artistic theories for the anarchist press, until the

Bolsheviks closed down the anarchist papers.

In London, the anarchist magazine Liberty, edited by the tailor, James

Tochatti, and its contemporary The Torch, edited by the young Rossetti

sister, Olivia and Helen, briefly forged a working alliance with some of

the more socially aware artists of Victorian England. Walter Crane

designed the Liberty Press logo and contributed a poster design

depicting the Haymarket martyrs to Liberty. G.F. Watts also contributed

illustrations to Liberty, while the young Lucien Pissarro provided a

series of graphics to the Torch.

Walter Crane’s connections with the anarchist movement are usually

ignored by his biographers, but were in fact central to his concept of

socialism. Not only did he contribute to Liberty, but also to Freedom,

and to the anarchist influenced Commonweal, the newspaper of the

Socialist League. In 1896 he made an unsuccessful attempt to have the

anarchist accepted by the Second International. Immediately after the

Haymarket incident, he wrote a poem on the “Suppression of Free Speech

in Chicago”. Crane wrote another poem “Freedom in America” expressing

his disgust at the travesty of justice in the Haymarket trial, and

attended the protest on Bloody Sunday which was attacked by the police.

He narrowly escaped injury and arrest. On a subsequent trip to America

Crane was a speaker at a commemoration meeting in honour of the Chicago

anarchists, appearing on the platform with Benjamin Tucker. Attacked by

the press for his stand he wrote in his own defense in the Boston

Herald:

“Anarchism simply means a plea for a life of voluntary association, of

free individual development — the freedom only bounded by respect for

the freedom of others.”

Artistically his most interesting contribution to the anarchist cause

was the cover he produced for the prospectus of the International

Socialist School run by Louise Michel while she was in London. The

guiding committee of this school included Kropotkin, William Morris and

Malatesta.

Many of the artists who were involved in the anarchist movement took

their involvement well past the point of contributing the occasional

illustration, often at considerable personal risk. Maximilien Luce, for

example was placed on trial for his anarchist beliefs and activity, in

the Trial of Thirty, which took place in 1894 in the wake of several

bombings by Parisian anarchists. Luce and most of the others were

acquitted, but the incident is recorded in Mazas, an album of

lithographs depicting life for the imprisoned anarchists awaiting trial

in the infamous Mazas jail. In the same year, the Italian divisionist

painter Plino Nomellini was placed on trial in Genoa, with several other

Italian anarchists including Luigi Galleani, for conspiring to overthrow

the state.

Prison

Another artist Aristide Delannoy, was imprisoned for his anarchist art.

Delannoy was a prolific contributor to anarchist periodicals, ranging

from the satirical L’Assiette au Beurre, to the revolutionary Les Temps

Nouveaux. Together with the journalist Victor Meric, Delannoy produced

the magazine called Les Hommes du Jour, and in the issue of October

3^(rd) 1908, he portrayed General d’Amade, the occupier of Morocco, as a

blood stained butcher standing amidst his colonial victims. This

illustration cost Delannoy a 3,000 franc fine and a one year prison

sentence. Public pressure, including mass protest meetings addressed by

Anatole France, eventually forced a pardon. On his release he was soon

in trouble with the authorities again, this time for a series of

anti-militarist drawings, but the months in La Sante prison had

aggravated a hereditary lung condition, and he died on April 5^(th),

1911, aged just 37.

The basis of involvement by artists in the anarchist movement has been

summerize by the Italian artist Enrico Baj, in an interview of A-Rivista

Anarchica:

“There is one driving force of an artist that always has a basis in

anarchism; that is, the desire for freedom and the rebellion against the

dictates of conformity in art. We can say that every artist has a

certain degree of the anarchist spirit and, in me, it is perhaps the

greater because I have considered by ideas deeply and I have cultivated

this sensation which, for other painters, is only superficial. In order

to invent one must break the bonds that bind us to pre-determined

formulae. The most important thing is not to passively submit but to

understand what is happening around us. I believe that an artist must

build and signify his own freedom.”

Baj’s anti militarist collages have been both contriversial and

internationally acclaimed, but he is best known for the long series of

works around the theme of the police murder of Guiseppe Pinelli, Baj’s

major work on the theme “The Funeral of the Anarchist Pinelli” was the

subject of censorship in 1972. Earlier works were also the subject of

censorship and right wing attacks in both Italy and Brazil. Among Baj’s

recent work was the vivid depiction of liberty and authority for the

poster advertising the anarchist gathering in Venice in 1984.

One time merchant sailor Flavio Constantini has, like fellow Italian

Baj, depicted the murder of Pinelli. The stark simplicity of the image

of Pinelli’s broken body contrasting sharply with the artists more

ornate and brightly coloured depictions of other scenes from anarchist

history. Constantini’s work has appeared in numerous anarchist

publications in many different countries and a second edition of a

collection of the illustrations, The Art of Anarchy, has been published

by Black Flag to raise funds for the Anarchist Black Cross. In a short

autobiographical article published in the now defunct Wildcat (not to be

confused with the current magazine with the same name), Constantini

writes of “an isolated but insistant voice, an ancient Utopia” which

presents an alternative to capitalism and communist authoritarianism. “I

have tried” he writes, “within the scope of my own possibilities, to

publicise this uncompromising alternative”.

Innovative

In France several innovative artists are associated with the anarchist

movement, including cartoonist/illustrators Cabu and Tardi. The exciting

graphic artist Luciano Loicono has been a member of the French Anarchist

Federation for many years contributing to many of their publications

including Le Monde Libertaire and Magazine Libertaire. Luciano’s single

most powerful work, was a poster he designed in the immediate aftermath

of a police raid on Radio Libertaire. The police smashed the

transmission equipment, hoping to put the radio off air. Within 24 hours

more that 5,000 took to the Paris streets in protest, many of them

carrying Luciano’s posters which also covered the Paris walls, depicting

a young woman with a padlock throught her lips, symbolising the brutal

denial of speech.

Among the many contempory artists who link their art with the need for

revolution is the American avant-garde artist Carlos Cortes. Cortes has

produced exciting posters of anarchist heroes like Ricardo Flores Magon

and Joe Hill, but is also involved in community struggles throught the

Industrial Workers of the World, and through Chicano groups.His posters

and graphics are fly posted at night protesting about police brutality,

racism and social injustice, and articulate the fear and anger of the

repressed.

As anarchists our concern cannot just be with the past or the present,

but must also be with the immediate future. Speaking personally it seems

that our central concern must be to democratise artistic creation.

Posters, comics, postcards, magazine illustrations, and other forms of

art have helped to spread and democratise the consumption of art, but as

a movement we hve yet to put Herbert Read’s idea of “every person a

special kind of artist” into practice. We should attempt to organise

workshops to explain techniques and methods and establish

collectively-run resource centres in each community. If, however, these

are to avoid the degeneration exprerienced by the arts lab movement they

must have closer links with the social needs of the community and with

the revolutionary movement. We must also begin to redefine what we mean

by the term artist, so that the artist ceases to be a person apart.We

all need to develop the artist’s skills and vision.

Part 3: War Artists of the Class War

The role of the revolutionary artist is to reveal the real nature of

capitalist society, to attack the system that causes poverty, hunger and

death; to rip aside the mask that conceals systematic corruption,

heartless bureaucracy and biased laws; to remind people that they are

not alone, that their individual acts of resistance can be more

effective as collective action taken with other people.

One such artist is 69 year-old Carlos Cortez. His lino-cut posters

attack the evils and hypocrisy of capitalism. They are fly-posted around

the Chicago streets at night and provide illustrations to accompany

articles in the revolutionary press. Taking the heroes of revolutionary

anarchism and the quiet daily heroism of the oppressed as his themes,

his art is popular and populist.

The son of a Mexican Indian, who was an organiser for the Industrial

Workers of the World (the I.W.W. also known as “wobblies”), and a German

socialist mother, Cortez has been a “harvest hand, construction worker,

loafer, jailbird... vagabond factory stiff”. He joined the I.W.W. after

World War 2 and his articles, poems and illustrations have appeared in

its paper, ‘Industrial Worker’ ever since.

‘La Lucha Continua’

Cortez draws on his Mexican Indian origins and his involvement with the

wobblies for his visual images. Typically these ideas came together in a

woodcut entitled ‘La lucha continua’ (‘the struggle continues’). Based

on photographs of a peasant demonstration in Bolivia, Carlos added two

skeletons and a pregnant woman, indicating that the struggle is

something that takes in the past, present and future.

One striking woodblock poster depicts a Meztizo family, standing in

front of a pyramid at the side of a stalk of maize, with the wording

“Somos de la Tierra — No somos illegales” (“we are of the land — we are

not illegal”). Produced to protect against the harassment of

undocumented immigrants from Mexico by the U.S. immigration authorities.

“Imagine those whose ancestors came from another continent telling the

natives of this continent that they do not have the right to move around

in their own land. Migrating to better their economic conditions is

precisely what brought the Europeans over to this hemisphere”, Carlos

explains. A similar point was made on a small card advertising an

exhibition celebrating “500 years of Resistance” which portrays a group

of American Indians laughing at a portrait of Christopher Columbus.

Central America

American imperialism in Central and South America has been a favourite

target for Cortez. One poster depicts a nursing mother and child,

holding the slogan: “Mirucomo trabajan tuo impuestos, CABRON!” (“look

how your taxes work, cuckold”). Behind the mother and child tower

skeletons in helmets marked “Policia”. This poster was designed to draw

attention to the way the taxes of U.S. workers are used against workers

in Central America, in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. A smaller

poster depicts parents grieving over a flag-draped coffin and lists the

number of U.S. soldiers killed in wars of intervention. Printed down the

side is the slogan: “Draftees of the world, unite. You have nothing to

lose but your Generals!”

One woodcut has been based on the collective experience of Guatemalan

women whose husbands had ‘disappeared’, after being taken from their

houses by armed gangs. Cortez gathered their stories together, and

synthesised it into the depiction of a family house invaded by a death

squad, a masked informer points the woman’s husband out to the killers.

Living in Chicago, Carlos is active with the Movimento Artistico Chicano

(MARCH). One poster printed for MARCH is of the 19^(th) century Mexican

engraver Jose Guadalupe Posada, embraced by one of the calaveras

(animated skeletons) for which he was famous. Mexican artistic

influences shape Cortez’s work and the striking black and white images

recall those of the revolutionary Mexican artists grouped around the

paper El Machete.

Resistance and Community

The depiction of Posada is one of many portrait posters, which include

the legendary song-writer and wobbly agitator Joe Hill, the Mexican

anarchist-communist, Ricardo Flores Magon, and Lucy Parsons, a former

slave, who dedicated her whole life to revolutionary action. In all

these portraits Cortez combines image and text, and the subject gazes

out with a direct honesty which confronts the viewer.

In Britain the artist most closely identified with anarchism is Clifford

Harper. An illustrator whose work frequently appears in the national

press, Harper’s graphics have celebrated resistance and community,

providing a critique of all that is wrong with capitalism, attacking all

forms of authoritarianism and projecting a utopian vision of possible

alternatives. Born into a west London working-class family, his

schoolboy rebelliousness — truancy, expulsion and petty crime — grew

into involvement with the sixties counter-culture and increasing

political awareness. This included a period of living in a commune which

provided glimpses of life’s potential — a potential described in one of

his first major works ‘Class War Comix’ and a frequently reprinted

series of illustrations commissioned for ‘Radical Technology’, which

presented utopian ideas in a practical early obtainable manner —

terraced houses with collectivised gardens, community workshops and

medical centres in which the sexual division of labour had been

transformed. These visions were contrasted with the reality of

capitalism portrayed in Patriarch Street Scene.

Stirring Depiction

The idea that anarchism is realistic, is attainable, that its many

strands make a vibrant alternative to capitalism was reinforced by the

cover of a 1976 catalogue for Compendium Bookshop, which featured

pictures of windmills, waterfalls working and demonstrating women

alongside some of the historical figures of anarchism.

It is also the theme which runs through ‘Anarchy; a Graphic Guide’,

which was published in 1987. This was written and illustrated by Harper,

and provides one of the best introductions to the ideas of anarchism.

All the variants of anarchism are explored, and represented as valid

alternatives to capitalism. The illustrations draw on the various styles

and artists connected with anarchism in the past, Farns Masereel being

one obvious example. He also uses the traditional iconography of

anarchism: Light, chains, hammers, prison bars, flags, crowds and

barricades all reinforce the ideas explained in the text. In chapter 4

an explanation of the Paris Commune is accompanied by a stirring

depiction of women in assertive and revolutionary roles.

Much of Harper’s graphic work celebrates resistance. On of his most

effective works was the black and white cartoon-strip tribute to Jim

Heather-Hayes, the young anarchist poet who committed suicide in Ashford

prison after serving four months in solitary confinement for

fire-bombing a London police station in 1982. The cartoon-strip is a

format he frequently uses, sometimes to illustrate poems, such as

Seigfried Sassoon’s anti-war poem ‘Fight to a Finish’, in which the

returning soldiers turn on the press before driving the “butchers out of

Parliament”.

Rebellious Spirit

Harper’s recent work includes the illustration and design of ‘Visions of

Poetry’ an anthology of 20^(th) century anarchist poetry, which he also

helped edit. This and a slimmer volume published at the same time, the

‘Prolegomena to a study of the Return of the Repressed in History’ are

skilfully designed and crafted, with text and illustration working

together in harmony. The illustrations of the ‘Prolegomena’ stand in the

edge of abstraction, yet provide the perfect foil for the bitter

denunciations of authority found in the text.

In stark contrast to this move towards the semi-abstract are his series

of picture-card portraits of 36 anarchists, men and women who have

dreamed of a different way of life, including Emiliano Zapata, the

Chinese writer Ba Jin and John Cage, the musician. Harper’s work has

been diverse, and he has illustrated book jackets, LP covers, magazine

articles, but his best work has often been that which has related to a

particular struggle, such as the poll-tax rebellion. His image of angry

peasants captured the rebellious spirit of the mass of ordinary people,

and linked it to similar revolts of the past. Little wonder that his

particular image was reprinted again and again. Cortez and Harper live

on separate continents, yet both are united in their opposition to

capitalism by a determination to document the class war as it happens —

in doing so they have created art with greater meaning, relevance and

engagement than all the arid portraits and landscapes that fill the

gallery walls.