Gran Fury

This article is about the activist group. For the automobile, see Plymouth Gran Fury.
This graphic was one of many created by Gran Fury in response to the lack of awareness regarding the AIDS pandemic.

Emerging from ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in 1988, Gran Fury was an AIDS activist artist collective from New York City consisting of 11 members including: Richard Elovich, Avram Finkelstein, Amy Heard, Tom Kalin, John Lindell, Loring McAlpin, Marlene McCarty, Donald Moffett, Michael Nesline, Mark Simpson and Robert Vazquez-Pacheco.[1][2][3]

The participation of "visual artists in ACT UP and other collectives was essential to the effectiveness of the campaigns of protest, education and awareness about AIDS."[4] The collective mutually disbanded in 1995, a year prior to Mark Simpson's death on November 10, 1996, from AIDS.[5] Gran Fury organized as an autonomous collective, describing themselves as a "...band of individuals united in anger and dedicated to exploiting the power of art to end the AIDS crisis."[6] The contribution of recycling historical images of homoerotic pleasure contributed to the pictorial landscape of the AIDS activist movement. Recycling the title of the Plymouth sedan used by New York Police Department, Richard Meyer writes, "[i]nscribed within the group's name...both a subjective experience (rage) and a tool of State power (police squad cars)," referencing "both an internal sensation and an external force".[6] Action, not art, was the aim of the collective.[7] Producing posters and agitprop in alliance with ACT UP to accompany the larger group's demonstration, Gran Fury served, in the words of Adam Rolston and Douglas Crimp, as ACT UP's "unofficial propaganda ministry and guerrilla graphic designers."[8] All of Gran Fury's work is in the public domain.[9]

  1. ^ Bottinelli, Silva (November 25, 2015). "Act Up New York: Activism, Art and the Aids Crisis, 1987-1993". Art Papers.
  2. ^ "Conversation with Helen Molesworth and Gran Fury Members: Avram Finkelstein, Tom Kalin, Marlene McCarty, Robert Vazquez-Pacheco". Columbia University School of the Arts. Archived from the original on November 26, 2015. Retrieved 2015-11-06.
  3. ^ Clements, Alexis. "We Were Not Making Art, We Were at War." Hyperallergic. November 21, 2012. Retrieved 2017-06-13
  4. ^ Decter, Joshua. "Infect the Public Domain with an Imagevirus: General Idea's AIDS Project." Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry. Spring-Summer 2007
  5. ^ Crimp, Douglas (November 25, 2015). "Gran Fury Talks to Douglas Crimp". Art Forum.
  6. ^ a b Meyer, Richard (2002). Outlaw Representation: Censorship & Homosexuality in Twentieth Century American Art. Oxford: Oxford. pp. 225–237.
  7. ^ Kabat, Jennifer (2012), Not Enough, Frieze Magazine
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kalb was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ "Gran Fury". Gran Fury. Retrieved 2022-01-05.