Four Questions for Anarchist Art

by Josh MacPhee
From Perspectives in Anarchist Theory, Fall 2005.

Anti-authoritarians have been extremely successful in using art and spectacle in recent years, whether to re-energize the protest movement in Seattle with both puppets and window smashing, or to fight dam construction in India with complex ceremonies and direct action theater. Historically, art has played an important role in revolutionary movements, and the Left has a long tradition of cultural resistance, particularly in the graphic arts. The graphics collective, Atelier Populaire played an integral role in the student-worker uprising in Paris in May 1968. Amilcar Cabral has written extensively on the central role of culture in the African liberation movements in the 60s and 70s.

Surprisingly most of this history seems lost to the Left itself, and we are far more likely to have a corporation mine our own visual history to create advertisements than to study and understand the history ourselves. Indeed, art and culture are rarely the focus of debate for anarchists and anti-authoritarians. As art has become increasingly rarefied in our society, and relegated to museums and expensive galleries, we have tended to spend decreasing amounts of time thinking about it. As a result, our definition of “Anarchist Art” is usually by default simply art created by an anarchist, whether it is a clip-art graphic, a heavy metal song, agit-prop street theater or an abstract painting.

Rather than being content with shallow, unconsidered or simply absent perspectives on art, I think it is extremely important that anarchists develop complex ideas about how art and culture operate in society, influence emotions and ideas, and are part of movements for social change.

For over ten years I have been actively producing art and graphics for anarchist projects and publications, attempting to develop anti-authoritarian concepts and ethics in my art practice, and put forward radical ideas through art created for and on streets across the United States. Like any other anarchist agitator, I want to debate the effectiveness of my critical actions, but as a movement we don’t have the proper tools to assess cultural work. (Generally speaking, I have received little critical response to my artwork from other anarchists.) Developing such conceptual and critical tools is as complicated as it is vital, since culture and art are qualitative, not quantitative. You can count the bodies that came to a protest or the amount of money raised by a fundraiser, but then there is no clear scale by which to measure the effectiveness of a cultural product or event.

So what would a new and more nuanced perspective on “Anarchist Art” look like? If anarchist art isn’t just art made by anarchists, what is it? I’m not proposing that there should be a strict definition, or that we should set as our goal the ability to decide what is, or isn’t, anarchist culture. But we do need to think through the implications of our activities, whether we are producers, users, or just viewers/listeners of art. Anarchists should think about the effectiveness of the culture we produce, and maybe question why we produce an endless parade of text-heavy newspapers and pamphlets instead of beautiful posters, street art, or videos. I propose that we could ask the following questions about any particular art piece or activity, in order to help illuminate the role(s) it does or might play:

1. Is it anti-authoritarian in content? Does it directly promote anarchism? Is it a portrait of Bakunin? An advertisement for self-management?

2. Is it anti-authoritarian in form? Is it a play put on by theater troupe without a director? Is it a series of posters that have been collaboratively produced? Is it a directive telling the audience what to think, or does it pose questions or freely offer information to an audience?

3. How does it enter the world? What is its audience? Is it an expensive one of a kind art object in an exclusive gallery? Is it a reproducible and inexpensive print? Is it posted on the street for anyone to see? Is it a mural on the side of a neighborhood community center?

4. Does it directly contest state or corporate power? Is it illegal? Does it challenge capitalist or social relations?

I’ve been trying to grapple with all of these issues in my own art practice over the past ten years. I used to take the first question very seriously, and thought that the content of my work had to be revolutionary: pictures of heros, people protesting, shouts against U.S. imperialism. My poster “Places the U.S. has Bombed since World War Two” and my Ricardo Flores Magon stencil are good examples of this kind of didactic political art. The Magon stencil clearly responds to the first question, it is a portrait of an anarchist. The bombs poster is as didactic as the Magon stencil, but not necessarily anarchist. What is interesting is that, unlike the stencil, it expects something of the audience; it asks them to challenge dominant conceptions of the role of the United States in the rest of the world.

Increasingly I’ve been reflecting back on this, and feeling that the questions that have oriented traditional revolutionary art, for instance the question of how to “properly” represent the working class, seem flat and increasingly meaningless. I don’t want to create art that makes people think like me (or the political party of which I am a member). I want to make art that encourages people to think, period. It is a collective failure to reflect, grapple with complexity, and develop critical thinking skills that has undermined so many past movements for social change. In this light, question one becomes far less interesting than the other three.

Over time I have attempted to develop more work that asks questions rather than answering them. Five or six years ago I began attempting to create art that operates in radical ways but that simply isn’t surface level anarchist propaganda. One of the first projects I came up with was a series of graphic leaf images that I stenciled in various shapes and sizes around Chicago. Most were larger than life 2' x 3' leaves, although some were smaller, like on the one painted on an abandoned television. What I think made this project effective was its novelty and context. No one expected to see gigantic leaves painted in front of their apartment. They weren’t traditional graffiti, though they were spray painted, which clearly made them illegal. They weren’t murals, and didn’t operate in the way most community art projects do. They weren’t an advertisement, and theory weren’t communicating a clear or simple message. All of this forced an audience to ponder this alien invasion in the visual landscape, and since there is so little in public view that demands that we think, this was a radical act in and of itself. Although not originally intended as such, the leaves also became an environmental statement. By haunting the cityscape they raised simple questions that are rarely asked publicly about why the primary green space in the city is becoming the pre-fab flowers and trees planted in road medians.

The “Are We Free Yet?” pill bottle [image] is intended to operate in a similar manner. In this example, a larger than life object is directly asking the viewer a question, but it is unclear whether the question refers back to the “freedom” that drug companies claim their products provide, a much larger political question about our entire existence, or something more personal that viewers are to ask themselves.

I think these are good examples of why corm and context are important to consider when looking at art’s potential to radically transform an audience’s consciousness or outlook. In the abstract, an image of a leaf is hardly radical, or even political for that matter. It is the how, why and where of the leaf that become important. In these examples, effectiveness demanded that I consciously reject anarchist content in order to catch the viewer off guard. In addition, because it is situated on the street, the work is free and accessible to everyone, but ironically this location makes the art illegal. Its very existence is evidence that someone transcended the boundaries of societally acceptable ways to communicate. Ideally, this contradiction should raise some pretty interesting questions for the viewer about the nature of control, communication and public space.

Like the larger anarchist movement, which creates and re-creates inventive ways to collaborate, build and organize, radical artists need to recognize that our efforts are minimized when we work alone. I think my collaborative work has been more important than my individual work. This has taken many forms. One example is the Celebrate People’s History poster series, for which I’ve organized over 20 artists (so far) to create posters celebrating points in radical history. The posters are then printed and distributed as far and wide as possible, including being wheat-pasted on the street. Another collectively organized activity was a long string of large-scale social events. The first was the Department of Space and Land Reclamation in 2001, a weekend-long event encouraging artists and activists to enact projects that reclaimed the streets of Chicago in some way, whether through pirate radio broadcasts or by causing massive disturbances on the main commercial strip in downtown. Since that initial event,, I’ve worked with an evolving crew of artists and activists to produce a huge volume of projects, some attacking problems like gentrification or the corporatization of daily life, others intervening in more traditional protest situations.

I’ve proposed the above questions partly because they relate to the evolution of my own work. I’m sure that the anti-authoritarian artists who work in other ways would raise different questions. More public dialogue around our questions and problems can only help the entire movement to develop, and I would really love to hear from other artists and activists interested in developing deeper theory and practice around anti-authoritarian cultural production. We need to start sharing ideas and building new and exciting projects. I’m sure this is already going on in some places, and I want to participate.