香港六合彩

In mid-January 1925, Andr茅 Breton published an editorial, 鈥淟a derni猫re gr猫ve鈥� (The Last Strike) in the opening pages of the second issue of the new Parisian journal he helped produce, La R茅volution surr茅aliste (Surrealist revolution). Breton鈥檚 essay discusses the tentative economic value of cultural and intellectual production in the capitalist economy and calls for artists, philosophers, and scholars to undertake a general strike for a period lasting between several nights to one year. Breton鈥檚 鈥淟ast Strike鈥� essay influenced another and much more well-known call for an art strike by a French writer who was closely aligned with surrealism, Alain Jouffroy. The purpose of this presentation is to analyse Breton鈥檚 1925 鈥淟ast Strike鈥� essay in relation to Jouffroy鈥檚 late 1960s statements on the art strike and the revolutionary abolition of art, in order to determine the differences and similarities between their approaches, and to demonstrate how surrealism is essential to Jouffroy鈥檚 theories about the abolition of art as a key aspect of anticapitalist culture. Comparisons will also be drawn between the art strike statements of Breton and Jouffroy with art boycott actions, or principled withdrawals from and stoppages of art production by the Situationist International, the Art Workers鈥� Coalition, Lee Lozano, Gustav Metzger, Stewart Home, and other individuals and groups between the 1950s and the 1990s.

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Image credit: Daniel Pommereulle, as featured in L鈥檃bolition de l鈥檃rt [The Abolition of art], 1968, black-and-white film still, 16 mm.

The Marxism in Culture seminar series was conceived in 2002 to provide a forum for those committed to the continuing relevance of Marxism for cultural analysis.听Both "Marxism" and "culture" are conceived here in a broad sense. 听We understand Marxism as an ongoing self-critical tradition, and correspondingly the critique of Marxism's own history and premises is part of the agenda. "Culture" is intended to comprehend not only the traditional fine arts, but also aspects of popular culture such as film, popular music, and fashion. 听From this perspective, conventional distinctions between the avant-garde and the popular, the elite and the mass, the critical and the commercial are very much open for scrutiny. 听All historical inquiry is theoretically grounded, self-consciously or not, and theoretical work in the Marxist tradition demands empirical verification.听