Black Mask & Up Against the Wall Motherfucker: The Incomplete Works of Ron Hahne, Ben Morea, and the Black Mask Group (1993)

17 October 2012, dusan

Founded in New York City in the mid-1960s by self-educated ghetto kid and painter Ben Morea, the Black Mask group melded the ideas and inspiration of Dada and the Surrealists, with the anarchism of the Durruti Column from the Spanish Revolution. With a theory and practice that had much in common with their contemporaries the San Francisco Diggers, Dutch Provos, and the French Situationists—who famously excommunicated 3 of the 4 members of the British section of the Situationist International for associating too closely with Black Mask—the group intervened spectacularly in the art, politics and culture of their times. From shutting down the Museum of Modern Art to protesting Wall Street’s bankrolling of war, from battling with Maoists at SDS conferences to defending the Valerie Solanas shooting of Andy Warhol, Black Mask successfully straddled the counterculture and politics of the 60s, and remained the Joker in the pack of both sides of “The Movement.”

By 1968 Black Mask dissolved into “The Family” (popularly known as Up Against The Wall Motherfucker—the name to which they signed their first leaflet), which combined the confrontational theater and tactics of Black Mask with a much more aggressively “street” approach in dealing with the police, and authorities. Dubbed a “street gang with analysis” they were reputedly the only white grouping taken seriously by the Black Panther Party, and influenced everyone from the Weathermen to the “hippy” communal movements.

This volume collects the complete ten issues of the paper Black Mask (produced from 1966-1967 by Ben Morea and Ron Hahne), together with a generous collection of the leaflets, articles, and flyers generated by Black Mask, and UATW/MF, the UATW/MF Magazine, and both the Free Press and Rolling Stone reports on UATW/MF.

By Ben Morea and Ron Hahne
Edited by Jacques Vache Editorial Group, London, UK
Anticopyrighted under the Berne, Baby, Berne convention; any portion maybe produced by any means necessary, as permitted under the Copy-Cat Riot Actions, 1981, 1985, and 1990
ISBN 1873176708
140 pages
via Self Learn Los Angeles

wikipedia
publisher (2011 edition)
google books (2011 edition)

PDF (no OCR)


3 Responses to “Black Mask & Up Against the Wall Motherfucker: The Incomplete Works of Ron Hahne, Ben Morea, and the Black Mask Group (1993)”

  1. antiwarhol on July 23, 2020 7:39 am

    An interesting read in which Morea manages to justify the attempted murder of Andy Warhol.

  2. antiwarhol on July 23, 2020 7:42 am

    And since I can’t edit, let me clear, 99.999% of the time I don’t see murder as justifiable. And celebrating the shooting of Warhol is astoundingly amoral. This was the 1960s?

  3. Antiwarhol on August 22, 2020 1:02 am

    https://antiwarhol.com discusses Black Flag’s celebration of the Solanas shooting and documents the machinations of the corrupt players who gatekeep and enable fame and fortune in the artworld. Just published and after awhile, I hope to be able to post it here.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind