Just Say "NO!": The Art Of Rejection With Boris Lurie

NO!Digital Art, RTomens, 2017

'"No is, generally speaking, a better answer than "Yes"'
- Phillip Mathers, The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brien

'The time for Yes-art is not at all at hand.' - Boris Lurie, 1970

Rereading Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman recently, specifically Phillip Mathers' preference for saying "No", I was reminded of two other examples of negation; the first: Enrique Vila-Matas' book Bartleby & Co., in which the idea of writers rejecting writing is explored (a book in turn inspired by Herman Melville's novella Bartleby The Scrivner and his "I would prefer not to" credo) and Boris Lurie's NO!art movement.

I like a lot of Lurie's work very much, along with texts of the NO!art group. The horror he experienced at the hands of the Nazis (mother and sister slaughtered by them) no doubt fed into his rejection of strict regimes of any kind, including art, naturally. Although he began with quite ordinary sketches he soon evolved into a dark alternative to the likes of Rauschenberg. Less 'Pop', more anti-Pop, or a Pop punk; the spitting, snarling antidote to the popular art repackaging of commercial branding in the 60s.

Lurie was rejected at the time, or rather, not embraced to the extent others were in the Post-Expressionist Pop era. Looking at his work it's not hard to see why. Whilst others offered more sedate reflections of society and sexual imagery, Lurie explored cheap porn images in his ambiguous representation of the female form. If they were in bondage (literally in one case) were they, like all hetro males, binding themselves into sexual slavery, or being bound by the male gaze? 

Lurie's "NO!" won him little acclaim in the day but since his death there have been a few shows and some acceptance of his talent. I recommend No Compromises! The Art of Boris Lurie, along with O'Brien's The Third Policeman and Bartleby & Co.