Since 2015, British artist-writer Alexander Adams has been at the forefront of debates at the intersection of politics and culture. Beginning in the mid-2010s with a critique of the failings of liberalism, evolving through books on iconoclasm and artivism, Adams found his assumptions falling away. Experience of the collapse of the public arts and political consensus—as well as encountering writings by perennial traditionalists—led Adams to address the essence of being an artist in his writings, gathered in one book for the first time.

How to Start a Dissident Art Movement is a collection of polemical art essays, speeches, manifestoes and personal reflections (many previously unpublished) that develop arguments in Adams’s previous books. This book acts as a challenge and invitation to ambitious artists today by outlining the inner conflicts many experience. Focussing on core issues, How to Start a Dissident Art Movement steps over criticism of institutions and instead warns of fake traditionalism and the illusory hope of localism, calling for a reconsideration of Modernist art and the establishment of parallel networks. Included is a selection of mordant and revealing private letters by the author, which discuss great art, name sources of inspiration and consider problems faced by working artists.