ART STRIKE PAPERS TEXT DETAILS

This version of the Art Strike Papers differs very slightly from the printed edition. Actually, it may vary a great deal, depending on who else has had their hands on it before it came your way. For a start, it was taken from a word processed version made prior to the book being typeset, so it will contain a few typos and formatting 'errors' that were 'corrected' in the printed edition. However, as of my re-editing (this may have changed by the time you get it), the compilation also contains a few additional pieces of information, for example, about the identity of authors using akas or remaining anonymous, therefore it cannot be considered either an earlier or later version, it is simply an alternative rendering: at last, technology has liberated us from the authority of the text! No more anchored authorial voices, we are everywhere!.

"Art, seen in relation to its supreme destination, remains a thing of the past. It has hence lost for us what once made it true and vital, its former reality and necessity." Hegel.

"The exclusive concentration of artistic talent in particular individuals, and its suppression in the broad mass which is bound up with this, is a consequence of division of labour. If, even in certain social conditions, everyone was an excellent painter, that would not at all exclude the possibility of each of them being also an original painter, so that here too the difference between "human" and "unique" labour amounts to sheer nonsense. In any case, with a communist organisation of society, there disappears the subordination of the artist to local and national narrowness, which arises entirely from division of labour, and also the subordination of the artist to some definite art, thanks to which he is exclusively a painter, sculptor, etc, the very name of his activity adequately expressing the narrowness of his professional development and his dependence on division of labour. In a communist society there are no painters but at most people who engage in painting among other activities." Marx

Title: The Art Strike Papers edited by James Maddox Date: 1991
Description: Text of book of the same name, comprising commentaries around the 1990-93 Art Strike (originally bound with Neoist Manifestos by Stewart Home).

Stewart Home on the Art Strike after the Art Strike (lecture at V&A)

Art Strike Biennial

Previous (art and class)

Art Strike Start