John Cage wisely proclaimed in a lecture in the beginning of the seventies: “Politics cannot be gotten to by logic and by reason... as artists we should offer our governments more nonsense so they wake up.” That is exactly what Boris Lurie does. He no longer represents in his paintings what he likes. Unlike Warhol with his Campbell-cans which decidedly please his creator—and why shouldn't they please him? But Boris's conscience and own empiric experience dominate his creative personality: He does not merely observe, but he accuses with his visual works. Hitler's deconstruction works. But he criticizes as well any other work denying, limiting rights of humans... and that... exactly that is just too much for the art-scene TOO MUCH BLOOD ON THE PICTURES. But why? My question directed to the art-party guests still stands. And so it happens not to be cozy-sentimental titillation: learn from Goya, learn from Leonardo! Of course New York is unimpressed: living commences there but today.

Should fear and silence of the critical avantgarde in the USA continue much longer, then Europe will be granted time to go on from theoretical discussion to a strong production, yes, I mean to the construction of a strong art—our only possible response. Time is running short anyway: the New York Museum of Modern Art must return the Guernica painting to Spain. It belongs to the European artists who continue working in its direction. If the Museum of Modern Art ignores NO!art it has not earned Guernica. Picasso I believe agrees with me. He once said in an aphorism: “!No hay que tomar la pintura como un arte, sino como una regla da vida!” (Regard painting as a rule of life rather than as art!)

—Wolf Vostell, 1977