The Bad Boys of Modern Art

Anarchy has always seemed to me to be the most benign of the political philosophies: intelligent, socially minded and (pace Katzenjammer-era cartoons where anarchists skulk around with black bombs like bowling balls) relatively non-coercive. The lifetime of experience that has led me to believe nature—including human life—is messy and infinitely complex, has also led me to believe that ideologies, while seemingly tidy, are inadequate to describe actual reality. Worse yet, they always seem to be spouted by doctrinaire people making careers out of justifying things with which I totally disagree.

So with my skepticism about philosophy in general, I am either the most, or least, qualified artist I know to review University of Victoria art historian and anarchist Allan Antliff’s meticulously scholarly account of virtually every art movement (neo-impressionism, suprematism, constructivism) I’ve ever—well—loathed. That said, although I may have dragged myself...