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. The Holocaust was another recurrent theme and the artists sometime provocatively referred to their work as “Jew Art.” 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.”
Since 1999 until 2022 the NO!art is led by Dietmar Kirves (headquarters Berlin), and currently by Clayton Patterson (headquarters New York). Members are Rocco Armento, Isser Aronovici, Enrico Baj, Paolo Baratella, Herb Brown, Ronaldo Brunet, Guenter Brus, Al D’Arcangelo, Aleksey Dayen, FrankKirk 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, Enzo Mastrangelo, Stu Mead, Peter Meseck, Lil Picard, Leonid Pinchevsky, Bernard Rancillac, Francis Salles, Naomi Tereza Salmon, Reinhard Scheibner, Bruno Schleinstein, Dominik Stahlberg (Fronte Acciaio Cromato), Michelle Stuart, Aldo Tambellini, Seth Tobocman, Jean Toche, Toyo Tsuchiya, Wolf Vostell, Friedrich Wall, Mathilda Wolf, Natalia E. Woytasik, Miron Zownir
Statements:
NO!art has continued way beyond 1964 and also prior to 1958. The “cutting-off” date 1964, as espoused by the art historian is entirely artificial. Such cutting-off dates are common to art historians, done for cataloguing purposes, and what is more, for accreditation of monetary value in the art market.
The cutting-off dates also have a devastating effect on the production of artists, who are, by those means, being convinced that what they produce after a cutting-off date is secondary in importance, and do not belong any longer to the “new times”. Yet the art market hated it, for practical reasons of creating confusion about monetary value. That is the main and real reason for art historians and critics insisting on this untrue measure. ‒ Boris Lurie, 2003.
NO is rational and the rational is NO. ►Dietmar Kirves
FROM WHERE WE COME? WHERE WE GO? WHERE ARE WE? Those artists and/or art-gangsters, operators and speculators who had “forgotten” that art was about that (and not about commercial success, cultural politics and Hollywoodian glitz) are now suffering the results of their own poison. In substance, nothing much has changed since Gauguin: Are we objects or subjects of our own history? ‒ Jean-Jacques Lebel
ART IS NOT A MIRROR to reflect the world in, but a hammer with which to shape it. ►Vladimir Mayakovsky
MANIFESTATION
NO!art occupies the strategic juncture where artistic production meets socio-cultural action. NO!art targets are the hypocritical intelligentsia, capitalist culture manipulation and consumerism. NO!art aims total unabashed self-expression in art leading to social involvement.
NO!art is anti worldmarket-investment art: art-worldmarket-investment art equals cultural manipulation.
NO!art is against “clinical”, “scientific” estheticisms: (such estheticisms are not art).
NO!art is against the pyramiding of artworldmarket-investment-fashion-decorations (“minimal”, “color field”, “conceptual”): such games-decorations are the sleeping pills of culture. It is against “phantasy” in the service of the artmarket.
NO!art is against all artworldmarket “salon” art.
NO!art is anti Pop-art: Pop-art is reactionary. It celebrates the glories of consumer society, and it mocks only at what the lower classes consume. The can of soup, the cheap shirt. Pop-art is chauvinistic. It sabotages and detracts from a social art for all.
NO!art is anti chauvinistic: (Domination by any national “school” is based mainly on the size of investment capital available. Domination by any national “school” is equivalent to cultural imperialism).
NO!art is the crisis art of cultural suffocation.
NO!art is socially relevant personal expression it is social art, it is protest art, it is political art, it is anti-art (anti artmarket art).
NO!art naturally creates new esthetic forms or naturally operates within contemporary esthetic forms. Form (style) naturally derives from content, esthetic innovation is but a by-product of free unhampered expression.
NO!art abhors the “clinical”, “scientific”, pseudo-esthetic search for “esthetic innovation”.
NO!art opened up and influenced certain artworldmarket deviations for which it cannot be held responsible. It is at the misgrown root of artworldmarket Pop-art, of certain present day erotic-escapist, and horror-for-the-sake-of-horror work.
NO!art influenced positively present day political art, underground press and underground films and comics, “subversive” advertising in underground press, art (guerrilla) action groups, events of social content.
NO!art fighting since 1959 from within the Lion’s Mouth in New York City.
NO!art ruthlessly suppressed and decimated but not eliminated or exterminated by artworldmarket suppression.
NO!art from Pinups to Excrement: a social art rebellion.
NO!art is “programmatic”, through theme shows and manifestations freely growing within co-operative group effort. Each show, manifestation, naturally pointing towards next activity.
NO!art attempts to influence life through art and therefore calls for quick strategic artistic response.
NO!art done from the gut, is not an artistic occupation.
The time for YES!art is not at all at hand.
out of the ordinary in the world
development in the space
breathing from the earth
flowing across borders
green algae evolution
social developments
political correctness
discover the world
healthier lifestyle
wholeness tracks
to beat addiction
refugee camps
control arms
vaping daily
outsider art
visual arts
revealing
art bin
AMEN
