Boris Lurie and NO!art By Max Liljefors
Max Liljefors: NO!art is often described as an art movement active between 1958 and 1964. Do you agree about these years as the beginning and end of NO!art? If NO!art has continued after 1964, has it been in less organized, more individual forms?
Boris Lurie: NO!art has continued way beyond 1964 and also prior to 1958. The "cutting-off" date 1964, as espoused by the art historian Estera Milman is, in my opinion, entirely artificial, and I have argued about it with her. Such cutting-off dates are common to art historians, done for cataloguing purposes, and what is more, for accreditation of monetary value in the art market. The cutting-off dates also have a devastating effect on the production of artists, who are, by those means, being convinced that what they produce after a cutting-off date is secondary in importance, and do not belong any longer to the "new times". An example would be the Italian painter De Chirico, who dated his late paintings with early years, on the basis that the idea had come to him at that early date, but he got around to executing it only at the later date - quite valid, in my opinion - yet the art market hated it, for practical reasons of creating confusion about monetary value. That is, in my opinion, the main and real reason for art historians and critics insisting on this untrue measure.
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Source: Boris Lurie and NO!art By Max Liljefors
Boris Lurie: NO!art has continued way beyond 1964 and also prior to 1958. The "cutting-off" date 1964, as espoused by the art historian Estera Milman is, in my opinion, entirely artificial, and I have argued about it with her. Such cutting-off dates are common to art historians, done for cataloguing purposes, and what is more, for accreditation of monetary value in the art market. The cutting-off dates also have a devastating effect on the production of artists, who are, by those means, being convinced that what they produce after a cutting-off date is secondary in importance, and do not belong any longer to the "new times". An example would be the Italian painter De Chirico, who dated his late paintings with early years, on the basis that the idea had come to him at that early date, but he got around to executing it only at the later date - quite valid, in my opinion - yet the art market hated it, for practical reasons of creating confusion about monetary value. That is, in my opinion, the main and real reason for art historians and critics insisting on this untrue measure.
[…]
Source: Boris Lurie and NO!art By Max Liljefors