Tell Them I Said No

“I got my MFA during the cultural tipping point when the late-90s attitude against “selling out” shifted into the early 2010s hyperactivity of “the market.” Enter Martin Herbert’s just-published Tell Them I Said No, a collection of essays on artists who have withdrawn from the art world or adopted an “antagonistic position toward its mechanisms.” “A large part of the artist’s role in today’s professionalized art system is being present. Providing a counterargument to this concept of self-marketing, Herbert examines the nature of retreat, whether in protest, as a deliberate conceptual act, or out of necessity.” Published by the excellent Sternberg Press in London.”