The following online exhibition was curated to celebrate the first exhibition of Boris Lurie's works in the UK, titled Boris Lurie: Ever the Radical at OXO Gallery London (23rd September - 11th October 2026), presented by Ben Uri Gallery and Museum and the Boris Lurie Art Foundation.
New York City, 1959. The NO!art movement is set into motion. Boris Lurie becomes a founding artist alongside Sam Goodman and Stanley Fisher. Emerging from the cooperative March Gallery on East 10th Street, and later finding a home at Gallery: Gertrude Stein, NO!art established itself as a radical movement that challenged the social, political, and artistic establishments of its time.
NO!art: The Power of Protest explores a particular dichotomy within Lurie’s practice: the range and diversity of his techniques, media, and visual language set against the consistency of his recurring subject—the emphatic “NO” at the heart of NO!art. Bringing together the breadth of Lurie’s NO!art works, the exhibition considers how this repeated gesture of refusal became a powerful form of protest and a defining element of his artistic practice.
The iconoclastic expression of protest within Lurie’s NO!art became central to the recognition of his significance as an artist. In the introduction to NO!art Pin-ups, Excrement, Protest, Jew-Art (with Seymour Krim, 1988), Lurie described the movement’s doctrine as “total unabashed self-expression in art leading to social involvement.” NO!art emerged in direct opposition to the two increasingly commercial artistic movements of the era, Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism, and quickly gained notoriety for its uncompromising approach.
Exhibitions including Doom, Involvement, and Vulgar confronted difficult and provocative themes such as racism, war, consumerism, and the changing politics of the art world. Through these exhibitions and the works within them, NO!art challenged established conventions and refused the boundaries imposed by both artistic and social institutions.
In encountering Lurie’s NO!art today, the audience is invited to engage with the same spirit of questioning that characterised the movement’s early years: to challenge established norms, question accepted authorities, and reconsider the structures that shape the world around them. The repeated “NO” is therefore not simply a word or image, but an enduring gesture of refusal, confrontation, and protest.
