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19th-century realism Visual art was considered one of the most important aspects of anarchist activity from the birth of anarchism, with
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon writing on his friend and contemporary
Gustave Courbet in the essay "Du Principe de l'art", published 1865, that "The task of art is to warn us, to praise us, to teach us, to make us blush by confronting us with the mirror of our own conscience." Courbet also went on to paint Proudhon on several occasions. Similarly Courbet himself wrote in 1850:
Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism |left|277x277px Among the
Impressionists, the artist
Camille Pissarro is known to have had strong anarchist sympathies which led him to recommend to his children that they change their surnames to avoid being associated with his political beliefs. Pissarro's anarchism brought him into contact with the younger artists who formed the
Neo-Impressionist group, particularly
Paul Signac,
Henri-Edmond Cross,
Charles Angrand,
Théo van Rysselberghe and
Maximillien Luce, who were active in anarchist circles, particularly those of the political activist
Jean Grave, who encouraged other anarchist activists to embrace the potential of art to further their cause. In their collaborations they established a tripartite relationship between art and anarchism, still debated to this day, in which the artist could be employed for direct propagandistic purposes, or could show images of the true condition of the proletariat, or, more controversially, envision future realities towards which an anarchist revolution might aspire. It is in this latter context that the bucolic images of the south of France by artists such as Cross and Signac can be viewed as anarchist paintings.
Cubism and futurism '' by
Carlo Carrà, 1911|277x277pxPatricia Leighten has shown that Spanish
cubist painter
Juan Gris was an artist with strong anarchist sympathies, although she argues this is only evident in his overtly political cartoons. She suggests his cubist
still lives deliberately eschewed anarchist subject matter so that he "self-consciously drained his paintings of political import, avoiding such anarchist subjects as prostitutes and neutralised his radical style." However, drawing on the principle established by Neo-Impressionist artists such as Cross and Signac, that anarchist art can also involve visualising alternative realities for an anarchist society,
Michael Paraskos has criticised this reading of Gris's paintings, saying that this form of anarchism seems to demand that "artists conform to a predetermined template to define their work as radical. Cartoons of prostitutes are anarchist; paintings of bottles, playing cards and fruit are not." Though typically not associated with
futurism, anarchism had some minor influence on
Futurism.
Carlo Carrà's best known work was
The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, painted in 1911. In the 1912 catalogue for the Futurists' first Parisian exhibition,
Umberto Boccioni remarked "the sheaves of lines corresponding to all the conflicting forces, following the general law of violence" which he labeled
force lines encapsulating the Futurist idea of physical transcendentalism.
Mark Antliff has suggested that this futurist aesthetic was "designed to involve the spectator in the very politics that led to Italy's intervention in
World War I and, ultimately, to the rise of
Fascism in Italy." The art historian
Giovanni Lista has identified this aesthetic as first appearing in the
anarcho-syndicalist current, where
Marinetti encountered the
Sorelian "myths of action and violence". The
individualist anarchist philosopher and poet
Renzo Novatore belonged to the leftist section of futurism alongside other individualist anarcho-futurists such as
Dante Carnesecchi,
Leda Rafanelli,
Auro d'Arcola, and Giovanni Governato.
Surrealism Surrealism was both an artistic and political movement with aims at the liberation of the human being from the constraints of
capitalism, the state, and the cultural forces that limit the reign of the imagination. From its origins individualist anarchists like
Florent Fels opposed it with his magazine ''Action: Cahiers individualistes de philosophie et d'art''. However faced with the popularity of surrealism Fels' magazine closed in 1922. The movement developed in
France in the wake of
World War I with
André Breton (1896–1966) as its main theorist and poet. Originally it was tied closely to the
Communist Party. Later, Breton, a close friend of
Leon Trotsky, broke with the Communist Party and embraced anarchism, even writing in the publication of the French
Anarchist Federation. By the end of
World War II the surrealist group led by Breton had decided to explicitly embrace anarchism. In 1952 Breton wrote "It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself." "Breton was consistent in his support for the
francophone Anarchist Federation and he continued to offer his solidarity after the
Platformists around
Fontenis transformed the FA into the Federation Communiste Libertaire. He was one of the few intellectuals who continued to offer his support to the FCL during the
Algerian War (1954–1962) when the FCL suffered severe repression and was forced underground. He sheltered Fontenis whilst he was in hiding. He refused to take sides on the splits in the French anarchist movement and both he and Peret expressed solidarity as well with the new FA set up by the synthesist anarchists, and worked in the Antifascist Committees of the 1960s alongside the FA."|290x290px
Contemporary art In contemporary art anarchism can take diverse forms, from
carnivalesque street art, to
graffiti art and
graphic novels, to various traditional forms of art, including painting, sculpture, video and photography.|288x288px == Music ==