Up Against the Real: Black Mask from Art to Action, by Nadja Millner-Larsen, University of Chicago Press, 2023. 288 pages.THERE ARE MANY PATHS through the radical arts of the 1960s. Nadja Millner-Larsen’s Up Against the Real: Black Mask from Art to Action takes one back alley and turns it into a bustling boulevard.Her central figure: Ben Morea, artist-activist and acolyte of the Living Theatre and of East Village anarchist Murray Bookchin; member of Aldo Tambellini’s anti-commodification mixed-media Group Center; cofounder of the Neo-Dada provocateurs known as Black Mask (their name likely
An account of Franz Seiwert and the 'Cologne Progressives', a group or circle of artists who followed and participated in the radical currents around the German council communist organisations AAU and especially the AAU-E. The 'Cologne Progressives' may be the most radical group of artists ever.