_{In describing NO!art - a movement that emerged on New York’s Lower East Side in the} 60s – Boris Lurie resorts to the futuristic and almost Marxist rhetoric of Mayakovsky: “Art is not a mirror to reflect the world in, but a hammer with which to shape it” (Vladimir Mayakovsky). He defines this radical movement as “a strategic juncture where artistic production and socio-cultural action meet.” NO!art is more a statement than the production of artifacts. Precisely for this reason, Boris Lurie utilizes collage as his visual matrix, mounting on the canvas elements of posters and typeface. Typeface is reminiscent of propaganda, the word, and language. The semantics his scrupulous nihilism is imbued with is quite salient — two letters transform into a formula for protest, which is read as the hieroglyphic NO. In this work, Lurie cites and multiplies his own works, such as, the “Altered Man” series and the images of pin-ups. He makes use of the typographical matrix of advertising for supermarkets and toys that is intended to be disposable (garbage). And the mechanical reproduction of such “informational posters” is once again an allusion to political agitation.

This is what he himself writes about his own STATEMENT FOR THE NO! POSTERS ANTI- POP POSTERS, shown at Gallery: Gertrude Stein in 1964.

“1. The meaning of the NOPosters was seen and recognized, and the overprinting exe-cuted in March, 1963. 2. The NO-posters are entirely printed on the offset press. And there is no handwork whatsoever in their execution. Whatever "composition" has re- sulted is of purely accidental character. --- 3. The basics of the NO-posters are rejected or faulty paper-sheets, or paper-sheets used for cleaning of the printing presses. --- 4. The silver overprinting on the posters is accidental in its composition in the sense that the artist had no hand in its design. The symbols, - selected by the artist only as far as their subject matter in general is concerned - refer to the symbols he uses in his paintings and collages: the word "NO", the Pin-up-Girl, and sado-masochistic mail-order ad- vertising of torture scenes. --- 5. The pricing of the posters ...[has] been kept to a minimum - they sell from $25 - 100 emphasize the fact of their easy availability, and to point out the ridiculousness of overpricing, as practiced in the art-market in the area of ‘hand-made’ ‘pop art’. The NO-posters are truly popular posters, at truly popular prices...” 

-Julia Kissina