artpress 40th Anniversary: Six Writers on Art and Resistance

In its 40th anniversary issue, artpress features six writers—Alain Badiou, Georges Didi-Huberman, Pierre Guyotat, Michel Houellebecq, Philippe Sollers, and Robert Storr—each with a selected excerpt from their work. The texts, though diverse, share a focus on art's transformative and insubordinate power. Badiou discusses converting negative excess into affirmative rebellion. Didi-Huberman contrasts traditional humanism with Bataille's inclusive, Dionysian humanism. Guyotat asserts that art teaches insubordination and adds creative disorder. Houellebecq frames poetry as articulating suffering against societal indifference. Sollers describes a 'refractory' child who sees through societal fictions and finds fissures in the 'false decor.' Storr references Goya's indictment of Napoleonic terror, noting that organized crime operates in obscurity. The excerpts were presented at an event at the BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France) marking the magazine's four decades.