Anarchism, Geography and Painting: Élisée Reclus and Social Art

This chapter investigates the relationship between the anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus and the numerous artists he was acquainted with during his career as a scientist and a militant. It contributes to recent international research on the interplay of art and anarchism through the prism of Reclus and his scholarly and activist networks. Based on the exploration of primary sources such as correspondence and original texts by Reclus and his collaborators, my main argument is that Reclus’s engagement with visual arts (especially drawing and painting) allows us to understand some fundamental points of his geography and his anarchism. Reclus’s idea of beauty was inseparably linked to his idea of justice. Therefore, he argued that the social scientist, the activist and the artist had the task of building a better world, socially and aesthetically. For that reason, Reclus cooperated with artists representing different visual tendencies because he considered social content paramount in the assessment of art; though engaging directly with visual languages for both geographical publishing and political propaganda. Reclus and the anarchist geographers were strongly committed to the visual arts of their day. Within a wide network of intellectuals, activists and painters they proved to be at once influential and influenced. This essay suggests that several aspects of the artistic avant-garde of the first half of the twentieth century, such as the social role of art, the questioning of the aura and the dichotomy between the ‘creative genius’ and art’s recipients were anticipated by early anarchist geographers.