Black Mask & Up Against the Wall Motherfucker: The Incomplete Works of Ron Hahne, Ben Morea, and the Black Mask Group

by Ben Morea, Ron Hahne

Chronicling the history of two New York City provocateur groupsFree Press and Rolling Stone reports on Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker. Founded in the mid-1960s, the Black Mask group melded the ideas and inspiration of Dada with the anarchism of the Spanish Revolution, and this volume demonstrates how they heavily influenced the art, politics, and culture of the decade as they briefly shut down the Museum of Modern Art, protested Wall Street, battled at Students for a Democratic Society conferences, and defended the shooting of Andy Warhol. This history then details how in 1968 Black Mask reorganized as Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker, which combined the confrontational theater and tactics of Black Mask with a much more aggressive approach in dealing with the police and authorities. A lengthy interview with founder Ben Morea provides context and color to this fascinating documentary legacy.

Genres: Politics, Art, History, Activism, Nonfiction, Counter Culture, Theory

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Marc Lucke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the historical and cultural distance between myself and the author made this book a bit alienating at times, I nevertheless found it to be a compelling and worthwhile read.

Any attempt to provide alternative views of key historical moments is important and should be saluted: this collection provides a powerful response to -- and demands a re-evaluation of -- NYC's countercultural art scene and its political engagement and ultimate utility.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contemporary socialism is little more than an abstract schema of social revolution attached to a very bourgeois conception of the needs of human beings. Champagne leftists and their safe spaces: they are not that inclusive. Expensive, that is what they are: shiny bubbles for middle class people to create a room for one’s own - a nice orbit of self-importance because, yes, more like ME please!
For many, the solution to an ugly and sick world is to continue to call one another beautiful. Yes, let’s continue to live in comfort and complain about it. And while we’re at it, let’s call it a social revolution and be done with it. Oh but the violence, the suffering, the horror! How is it possible?

“The economic order of the past 200 years has changed the human structure considerably. But can we deny that this change is insignificant when compared to the comprehensive human impoverishment brought about by thousands of years of suppression of natural living, particularly of natural sexuality? It is only this suppression over thousands of years which has created the mass-psychological soil of fear of authority and submission to it, of incredible humility on the one side and sadistic brutality on the other, and by which the capitalist order of the past 200 years has been able to exist. The fact should not be forgotten, though, that it was socio-economic processes which, thousands of years ago, initiated this change in human structure. The core of happiness in life is arguably sexual happiness. Yet nobody of any political importance has ever dared to point this out. The statement was made, instead, that sexuality was a private matter and had nothing to do with politics.”

“What art will replace the burning bodies and dead minds this society is creating?”

“The hypocrisy of the war on poverty is clear. It is all guns and no butter.”

“The perennial “asses,” government and religion, are still spreading their lies while they burn people alive.”

“A total culture needs no experts, no artists, no specialists or unique individuals: just plain people.”

“Human dignity has been reduced to the rank of an exchange value.”

“In industrially advanced countries the disappearance of material poverty has revealed the poverty of existence itself.”

“Psychoanalysis is a myth if it cannot help explain the contradictions of social life.”

“Creative man does not entertain or shock. He destroys.”

“The driving force of revolution is not economic misery, but rather the contradiction between the possibility of being human and the reality of oppression - of human not economic misery. This trend in Max’s thought had been obliterated by the efflorescence of egoism and fetishism in the socialist movement.” Spot on, really ties in with why there is no sense of priority on the left…

Yes, this was a good one, perhaps the best I’ve read about the “struggle” of the left. And yes, the question remains: do we need even more misery, more Poetry coming out of the barrel of a gun?

[Cuchi Aslogh · Rating 5 out of 5]

De verdad que de lo mejorcito que me he leído de política. Nada de puritanismo, nada pacifismo o de instituciones, puro caos, anarquía y diversión. Debería leerlo la peña activista para ver si despierta de tanta tontería pacifista

[Ronald J Schulz]

Very short collection of some of their pamphlets.

[Shelby Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

i don’t love non-fiction but this was a cool insight/guide to revolutionary action and ideology/protests made by this radical group in the 60s.

[Ronald Schulz · Rating 5 out of 5]

a collection of their primary anarchist documents

[6655321 · Rating 1 out of 5]

this is a step better than the yippies/Abbie Hoffman is the only reason it isn't tagged as zero stars, Art groups that do politics are usually the worst (Dada, the Surrealists, etc.) and Black Mask is among the most wretched, their only redeeming quality is that they printed tracts by H. Rap Brown & other POC revolutionary groups (which are in turn, dated, but at least interesting, unlike Hahne & Morea/ the rest of Black Mask's thoughts). "A Motherfucker is A Werewolf" is probably the best piece they produced, unless one is interested in writing about US Radical groups from the 60s and 70s there is really nothing worth reading here.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10