Why are we artists? 100 World Art Manifestos

World Art Manifestos will be a complementary text to the Penguin Modern Classic 100 Artists´ Manifestos: From the Futurists to the Stuckists. Given the ever-growing prominence of Latin American, Far and Middle Eastern and African art on the global stage, this book is especially relevant to today´s contemporary art scene. This collection of 100 vital, and yet perhaps lesser-known manifestos, voices the fascinating ideologies of more easily overlooked artistic movements of the last century across the world. Lack brings something fresh and thought-provoking to the conversation on why art, in all its guises, is a social and political necessity.%%%´Art is not a luxury. Art is a basic social need to which everyone has a right´. This extraordinary collection of 100 artists´ manifestos from across the globe over the last 100 years brings together activists, post-colonialists, surrealists, socialists, nihilists and a host of other voices. From the Négritude movement in Martinique to Poland´s Animal Manifesto, from Iraqi modernism to Australia´s Bitch Mutant Manifesto, they are by turns personal, political, utopian, angry, sublime and revolutionary. Some have not been published in English before; some were written in climates of censorship and brutality; some contain visions of a future still on the horizon. What unites them is the belief that art can change the world.