It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
Why Are We 'Artists'?

Why Are We 'Artists'?

100 World Art Manifestos

Summary

'Art is not a luxury. Art is a basic social need to which everyone has a right'.

This extraordinary collection of 100 artists' manifestos from across the globe over the last 100 years brings together activists, post-colonialists, surrealists, socialists, nihilists and a host of other voices. From the Négritude movement in Africa and Martinique to Brazil's Mud/Meat Sewer Manifesto, from Iraqi modernism to Australia's Cyberfeminist Manifesto, they are by turns personal, political, utopian, angry, sublime and revolutionary. Some have not been published in English before; some were written in climates of censorship and brutality; some contain visions of a future still on the horizon. What unites them is the belief that art can change the world.

About the author

Jessica Lack

Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more