BORIS LURIE
(1924-2008)

Artwork

ARTWORK

Westwood Gallery NYC presented the premiere U.S. exhibition for Boris Lurie after his death.

THE NO!ART MOVEMENT

NO!art, founded in 1960 by Lurie with Sam Goodman and Stanley Fisher, was primarily a strong reaction of the artists against the establishment. Its main intent was to address the less pleasant social realities, glossed over by the mainstream art, and to prompt for immediate action and social reform versus accepting the prevalent beautified version of reality. From such a platform, NO!art positioned itself directly in conflict with the glossy homage of consumerism celebrated by Pop art, and the already established high art, Abstract Expressionism, the two movements dominating the art scene at the time. As a result, the NO!art artists were largely ignored by the general public and the establishment, while gaining a cult following.

Mixed media artwork collage from newspaper cutouts brown background

Mixed media artwork collage from newspaper, magazine cutouts

Painting over newspaper cutouts collage with pinup image

Painting with the word “No” over pinup collage

Painting over newspaper cutouts collage with vintage pinup images

The theme choices often reference the historical context (sexual references hint to the mainstream repression at the time, as well as to the commercialization of sex, while the superimposition of war and extermination imagery stems from recent memories and from a need to shock in order to press for social reform). A NO!art artwork is definitely not a commodity or a decorative background, but more likely is meant to evoke wounds which are not healed, and which have been superficially hidden by the fabric of everyday life in 1960s US. In the same time, it represents a reaction against what the NO!art artists considered a fake, edulcorated version of events. The artworks incorporate photography, collage from newspapers and other sources, found objects and advertising banner words. One can see distorted female figures, obliterated faces, covered in scratches, words such as NO, AVOID, BLEED or SHARK BAIT. The surface of the artwork is not glossy, and the message is that another layer of disturbing imagery or information could exist in the social palimpsest, and it should be excavated. While the Dadaist and Surrealist filiation is evident, there is also a desperate need for authenticity and confronting life without attempting to hide its dark sides and to prompt the public to accept the need for social reform and openness as a cure for alienation.

Painting of male bust portrait in suit and tie with face scratched over, yellow background

Painting of male bust portrait in suit and tie with face scratched over, brown background

Painting of male bust portrait in suit and tie with face scratched over, blue background, red dripping surface at the top

Semi-abstract painting of a bust figure, red, blue, yellow background

Painting of male bust portrait in suit and tie with face covered over in paint, gray and yellow background

Painting of male bust portrait in suit and tie with face covered over in paint, gray and blue background

Large blue pinup collaged with newspaper cuttings on blue background and the word “NO” painted on top multiple times

Pinups collaged with newspaper cuttings on blue background and the word “NO” painted on top multiple times

Collage including the words NO, NON, SOLD OUT, McKesson, 2-for-1-sale, and a LIFE magazine snippet, New York, 1963

Painting of male bust portrait in suit and tie with face covered over in paint, gray and red background

Collage of the word NO from corrugated cardboard over a light gray background

Pinup collage with the word NO in brushstrokes, black paint

The word NO in orange, white, and blue paint on a black background

The word NO collaged in orange paper over a gray background which looks like old linoleum tiles

DISMEMBERED WOMEN

The female figures that populate his work, from the Dismembered Women Series (1955-57), through the Dancehall (1955), Black Figures (1957-58) and Three Women (1955-57) Series, to the Love (1963) and Pin-ups (1960-1964) Series must be understood through the matrix of the imponderable pain the loss of those dearest to him would inflict. The futile longing for their simple presence by his side, the desperate imaginings of what might have been -- for them far more so than for himself -- had the world not fallen into the clutches of evil, and the constant recognition that violence and inhumanity are equally a danger inherent in the everyday relations of the strong to the weak, the rich to the poor, and male to female, would inform his art even as he matured into the uncompromising radical his later work reveals. Because Lurie’s passion, or rather, compassion for the subject is so multifarious, his fundamental and overwhelming sympathy for women is sometimes misunderstood, especially in the later work, as unwholesome sexual obsession. The mirror he holds up to society is sometimes mistaken for the un-self-conscious mirror of his soul; his own, evidently vigorous, sexuality, forever colored, and indeed perhaps somehow stunted, by the camp experience, is rendered suspect by the insistent proximity of violence and death. His Dismembered Women, Pin-Ups, and Love Series, among others, at once assert that the objectification of women is violence against women and that female sexuality is a fundamental and ineradicable force, ideas difficult at best to incorporate in a single work.

BORIS LURIE (1924-2008)

ARTWORK ​​

BORIS LURIE
(1924-2008)

ARTWORK