What is radical art? An Anarchist Perspective

With a tradition stretching back over 1000 years Orthodox Christian art can be seen as the opposite of contemporary radical art. But in this lecture Dr Michael Paraskos argues that church art has much in common with anarchist art. In the last century many artists and theorists argued that radical art illustrates radical subject matter or ideas, and this belief was particularly strong amongst mainstream Conceptual artists. But in this lecture Dr Paraskos will challenge that theory and explore another conception of radical art that emerged from anarchist intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This suggests that radical art does not illustrate radicalism, rather it is radical.

Using the work of the artist Mark Wallinger as an example Dr Paraskos will argue that many artists who claim to be radical today are in truth deeply conservative because they are trapped into thinking it is the subject matter that makes their work radical. He will suggest that for anarchists genuinely radical art is art that achieves something similar to radical politics, namely a transcendence out of the existing world and into a new reality. Using the work of anarchist writers such as the art critic Herbert Read, the artist Eric Gill and the novelist Emile Zola, Dr Paraskos suggests this is similar to the transcendence claimed for art by the Orthodox Church, where the religious icon is the manifestation of an alternative reality outside our world. This means the question for anarchists is the same as that faced by Orthodox Christians: is it ever possible to enter the alternatively reality of the work of art, whether it depicts a Christian heaven or an anarchist utopia.

Biography
Michael Paraskos studied at Leeds and Nottingham universities. He has taught at the Leeds University and the University of York, and was previously Head of Art History for Fine Art at the University of Hill. He is the author of several books, and his new book The New Aesthetics will be published in 2013. His articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines including The Art Book, Epoch Times, Sculpture Journal, British Art Journal, Sanat Dünyamız and The Spectator and he is Director of the Cyprus College of Art. Web: www.michaelparaskos.net

The lecture will be delivered in English.