| This dissertation focuses on specific examples of activism against the Vietnam War by three New York-based artists' groups, roughly from 1965 to 1971: Artists and Writers Protest, the Art Workers' Coalition, and the New York Art Strike. The first actions of the earliest of these groups, Artists and Writers Protest, were statements against the war, published in 1965. Two years later the group organized the Collage of Indignation, a collaborative visual antiwar statement. The Art Workers' Coalition came into being in early 1969, largely in response to demands for artists' rights within museums. After its founding, its platform quickly grew to broader reforms that included identifying and severing what the group saw as museums' complicity with the government in its waging of the war. In early 1970 the Coalition produced the poster Q. And Babies? A. And Babies, a visual expression different in production, goals, and style from the Collage of Indignation. The New York Art Strike, which began in May 1970, was both an action and a group. Its participants included members of the two other groups, as well other, previously uninvolved artists. As an action, the Art Strike challenged museums and galleries to close in response to such events as the invasion of Cambodia. The group further pressured museums to take political responsibility and sought to gain control over the government's use of art. In not producing any visual statement against the war, the Art Strike shifted the burden of responsibility onto art institutions and artists.;The dissertation examines these three groups by paying particular attention to the difficulties inherent in the relationship among artists, art objects, and activism that they forged. To do so, it uses four fields: (1) the art historical context; (2) the relationship between form and content, or the way history takes form aesthetically; (3) artistic identity; and (4) antisystemic movements. These fields shape the discussion of the three groups, which is divided among four separate chapters. The Introduction lays out the theoretical armature of the project, and the Conclusion offers a summary of the groups' final actions. |
