The boundary between radical art project and violence collapsed in 1968

Evidence

Like Dada or Black Mask, SCUM was less a political organization than an art project, albeit one with a body count. Motherfucker posters parodied the long-running Famous Artists School ad in which Norman Rockwell’s signature was attached to the slogan “We’re Looking for People Who Like to Draw” by juxtaposing avuncular Rockwell with a holstered revolver. The Motherfuckers stashed guns but did not use them. Solanas did. Her attack on Warhol (an artist Morea loathed) was for him the ultimate Dada act. Six months after Black Mask staged a mock murder, Solanas attempted a real one. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1158

Categorization

• XREF: Suits the reader’s gentrification-conditions thesis: the same scene produced both aesthetic experiment and assassination attempt, showing illegality and extremity were structural, not incidental.
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘the art project with a body count’ — how avant-garde self-justification absorbs real violence as an aesthetic move.