Dedicated to Sam Goodman knight brother-in-arms riding into battle NO!art banner unfurled, fallen not in mortal combat unfortunately but rotted by disease; resting for fourteen years now in his Nordic grave. Dedicated as well to K-9 longhair German Shepherd by name Punch, a female arms carrier since birth in 1965 up to 1977 twelve whole long dog-years, now retired, hard of hearing, weak of eye and wrought by disease.
Preface by Boris Lurie: In preparation since 1969 - rejected so far by publishers - this slender volume finally sees the light of day nineteen years after the untimely death of Goodman - the first published collection of essays on NO!art. No understanding of Radical - as opposed to market-oriented art - is possible without background information on NO!art, it occupies the strategic juncture where artistic production and socio-cultural action meet. This volume deals mainly with the collective period from about 1960 to 1964; individual earlier seminal works dating from about 1955 and individual later works dealing with "Women's Liberation", the new anti-Semitism, post revolutionary violence, post revolutionary sadomasochism are included. The origins of NO!art sprout from the Jewish experience, struck root in the world's largest Jewish community New York, a product of armies, concentration camps, Lumpenproletariat artists. Its targets are the hypocritical intelligentsia, capitalist culture manipulation, consumerism, American and other Moloch’s. Their aim total unabashed self-expression in art leading to social involvement. Collective confrontation artists as early as the Peace Demonstrations of 1961-62. No lighthearted Duchampesque Dadaists, Neodadaists, or "pop-artists"; no consumerism's middleclass nor Nouveau Riche Liberals' neuter background makers. But believers in the unfashionable notion of Art with a capital "A". - This is a very short version - we hope for eventual publication of a complete version with full illustrations and bibliography of NO!art: Pinups, Excrement, Protest, Jew-art.