Mikhail Martynov looks into the use of black as a symbol of opposition to hierarchical structures in contemporary art.
Speaking in the first person, he invites the reader to a dialogue on the political significance and the aesthetics of black. He explores the protest-related semantics of black in contemporary art and looks at various practices of using it as a medium of political protest since the anarchist tradition of the early twentieth century and the postrevolutionary years.
Martynov poses the question of whether black is universally associated with protest and rebellion, or if its protest connotation has been constructed again and again within particular art practices. Could the color’s radical aspect even be derived from its own characteristics?
