Sculptors Against the State

“Sculptors Against the State makes a valuable contribution to the scholarship on the cultural politics of early twentieth-century London and Paris and provides many paths to further investigate sculpture against the state.”

—Rosalind McKever CAA.Reviews

“Antliff’s text will ensure that their [Epstein, Boccioni, Gaudier-Brzeska] contributions, and the anarchist leanings of all the artists herein discussed, are not forgotten, and the book will inspire artists, art historians, creators, educators, and writers who are engaged with the intersection between art and politics in their own work.”

—Caterina Y. Pierre Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide

“Sculptors Against the State is a substantial and significant contribution to the existing literature on the aesthetics of anarchism. Antliff boldly ventures into new conceptual territory, reading form and materiality against political discourse and artistic criticism during the brief period leading up to the outbreak of World War I, precisely when such relationships came to be understood as some of the fundamental signposts of modernism.”

—Adam Jolles, author of The Curatorial Avant-Garde: Surrealism and Exhibition Practice in France, 1925-1941

“Mark Antliff’s work has been crucial in the transformation of our understanding of modernist art and the avant-garde. Through exacting scholarship he has shown that the ideological and philosophical aspects of artistic production in the early twentieth century are vital both to an understanding of modernism and to the interpretation of particular works of art. Sculptors Against the State is essential reading both for art historians and for students of anarchism.”

—Paul Edwards, author of Wyndham Lewis: Painter and Writer

“Antliff’s dizzying breadth of material and energy is impressively infectious… this is an exuberant illustrated volume which will enliven the shelves of many a scholar of sculpture and anarchism.”

—Declan Lloyd Anarchist Studies

Mark Antliff is Mary Grace Wilson Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Duke University. He is the author of many books, including Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-Garde and Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilization of Myth, Art, and Culture in France, 1909–1939.