How to Start a Dissident Art Movement

Since 2015, British artist-writer Alexander Adams has been at the forefront of debates at the intersection of politics and culture. Beginning in the mid-2010s with a critique of the failings of liberalism, evolving through books on iconoclasm and artivism, Adams found his assumptions falling away. Experience of the collapse of the public arts and political consensus-as well as encountering writings by perennial traditionalists-led Adams to address the essence of being an artist in his writings, gathered in one book for the first time.

How to Start a Dissident Art Movement is a collection of polemical art essays, speeches, manifestoes and personal reflections (many previously unpublished) that develop arguments in Adams's previous books. This book acts as a challenge and invitation to ambitious artists today by outlining the inner conflicts many experience. Focussing on core issues, How to Start a Dissident Art Movement steps over criticism of institutions and instead warns of fake traditionalism and the illusory hope of localism, calling for a reconsideration of Modernist art and the establishment of parallel networks. Included is a selection of mordant and revealing private letters by the author, which discuss great art, name sources of inspiration and consider problems faced by working artists.