Up Against the Real

"""Millner-Larsen reproduces examples of Black Mask alongside Abstract Expressionist paintings and images of expanded cinema events and political protests, mapping how the debates laid out in the broadsheet emerged in the ‘real’ world through Black Mask’s commitment to direct action. . . . Though Black Mask and UATWMF are remembered as a vigilante street gang, Millner-Larsen’s historically and materially grounded study specifies the ways in which the group’s commitment to direct action was rooted in an interest in the political and philosophical uses of aesthetics and abstraction, one that was maintained even after their edict to cease artmaking following their name change."" * Art Review * ""In the afternoon of October 10, 1966, six members of a radical anti-arts arts group marched in front of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) handing out leaflets while two members unraveled a large canvas sign announcing, 'MUSEUM CLOSED.' . . . The demonstrators were with the Black Mask and were offended by MoMA’s exhibition, 'Dada, Surrealism and Their Heritage,' which they felt violated the Dadaist and Surrealists very creative visions. . . . Nadja Millner-Larsen brilliantly tells the story of this now nearly all-but-forgotten group and how they pushed art beyond representation into activist demonstrations, foreshadowing the eclipse of the 1960s counterculture."" * New York Journal of Books * “Up Against the Real is an original, highly informed, and scholarly examination of a fascinating segment of contemporary art history. Millner-Larsen treats the complex milieu of 1960s radical politics and art as a living force within culture. She weaves a brilliant and scholarly narrative that on one level treats the anarchist art collective Black Mask as an anomaly, but also serves to illuminate the cultural politics of this tumultuous era.” -- Gregory Sholette, author of The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art “In Up Against the Real, Millner-Larsen introduces us to Black Mask, a group of downtown New York anti-art saboteurs who blasted out of the world of experimental painting and cinema and onto the streets, insisting that the abstraction of late modernist art heralded a new, liberatory, antirepresentational politics. With an acute understanding of the historical and theoretical stakes at play, Millner-Larsen restores their cultural revolution to its rightful place alongside the Situationists, the Young Lords, and other exemplars of ’60s radicalism.” -- Tom McDonough, author of The Beautiful Language of My Century"