In the Gallery Response to Machiavelli Tom Block
About This Show
The Response to Machiavelli paintings are the visual component of a larger activist project which explores the influence of the medieval social philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli on American politics. Machiavelli proposed that the “ends justify the means;” Tom Block’s paintings explore that premise, exposing the narrow, spiritually immature and destructive energies that all-too-often rule in our socio-political sphere. The project also involves Machiavelli in America – a book of social philosophy (Algora Publisher, NY, 2014); a theater piece Emission (developed at Dixon Place and then performed at Theater for the New City’s Dream Up Festival) and other works at the intersection of art and politics.
About the Artist
Tom Block is an artist, writer, and activist. He is best known for the development and implementation of Prophetic Activist Art – an activist art theory on which he is currently teaching a seminar at Dixon Place (Institute of Prophetic Activist Art). His activist work includes the Human Rights Painting Project with Amnesty International; Shalom/Salaam; and many other works presented at galleries, conferences and universities in the United States, Canada, Europe, Turkey and the Middle East. He was the founding producer of the Amnesty International Human Rights Art Festival in Silver Spring, MD and the Iraq History Art Project at DePaul University. Mr. Block has published five books and has exhibited his artwork in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Europe. His plays have been produced and read over the last three years in numerous venues in New York and Washington DC.