Max Geller

Max Geller (b. 1984 ) is an American performance artist and human rights activist.

Part of the Jewish left, Geller is an organizer and activist for Palestinian human rights, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS).

Geller's activism often employs non-traditional tactics, drawing on irony to provoke social discomfort without expressing an explicit political agenda.

His performance art, on the other hand, frequently blurs the lines between art and politics.

Geller is the founder of #renoirsucksatpainting, a tongue-in-cheek social movement to remove the paintings of Auguste Renoir from museums around the world.

He has frequently leveraged the Renoir Sucks at Painting project into media coverage for the BDS movement and other social causes.

Geller grew up in Brookline, MA, where his family participated in the secular Workmen's Circle community and where he celebrated his Bar Mitzvah.

He attended the The Cambridge School of Weston and Colorado College, where he played Ultimate Frisbee.

Geller has said that he became an activist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and began questioning Zionism because of George W. Bush's support for the State of Israel.

While in college, Geller and a friend conned their way into an appearance on the television arbitration show Judge Mathis, which aired in 2005.

Geller wrote a script for their disagreement, which the show presented at face value.

Geller's experiences as a boat captain have been broadcast on This American Life.

He traveled to Israel with Birthright Israel in 2006, where, according to reporter Kiera Feldman, he was "really radicalized by the anti-Arab virulence of his Birthright experience."

Geller is an active member of many groups organizing on behalf of Palestinian liberation, such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Palestine Action, and the New Orleans Palestinian Solidarity Committee (NOPSC) and he has been a frequent contributor to a variety of conferences and journals.

He has also presented at conferences of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, now the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.

While Geller was a student at Northeastern Law School, he was president of the local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

In 2013, the group staged a walkout of a presentation by Israeli soldiers, leading the school to put them on administrative probation.

SJP then delivered mock eviction letters to students, which resulted in the group's suspension.

Geller defended the incident in an op-ed in the Boston Globe and an appearance on Democracy Now!.

Geller told Chris Hedges that his SJP activism led to death threats and threats of disciplinary measures, which further catalyzed his activism.

Geller has organized a satirical campaign, Renoir Sucks At Painting (RSAP), against the artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir since 2015, both online and through various protests.

The campaign challenges Eurocentrism and demands that museums remove Renoir paintings from display, and show more work by women and artists of color; Geller says that Renoir is his focus because "if the problems with Eurocentricity were personified in a man, Renoir would be the disgusting" embodiment.

RSAP has received extensive coverage from a range out outlets including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Le Monde (France), The Forward, El País (Spain), Folha de S.Paulo (Brazil) and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany).

He has said that he was both "thrilled and alarmed by how serious people are taking this."

According to WBUR-FM, the campaign began after Geller visited the Barnes Foundation, which reportedly holds the largest Renoir collection in the world.

Part of his criticism is aesthetic: "When you look at a Renoir painting," Geller said to WBUR, "you feel nothing at all. It's just so unnourishing."

However, Geller also criticizes Renoir because of the painter's well known Antisemitism.

Renoir was among those who stood against Alfred Dreyfus during his trial for treason, and his contemporary Julie Manet recorded his Antisemitism in diaries.

Geller also hoped to make larger critiques of money in the art world, including the role risk-averse curators and wealthy museum trustees play in choosing the art people see.

He also believes that investors use collecting art as a way to whitewash of their controversial business decisions.

In February 2015, Geller created the Instagram account and began posting images of paintings by Renoir, with captions criticizing both the artist and the institutions that hang his art.

In May 2015, Renoir's great-great-granddaughter responded to one of the Instagram posts, entering into an argument with Geller, writing, "When your great-great-grandfather paints anything worth $78.1 million, then you can criticize. In the meantime, it is safe to say that the free market has spoken and Renoir did NOT suck at painting.”

On October 5, 2015, Geller organized a two-hour anti-Renoir protest outside the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

At the event, Geller led protestors in chants like "Other art is worth your while, Renoir paints a steaming pile."

In 2017, Geller was involved with the New Orleans Palestinian Solidarity Committee (NOPSC), which lobbied the New Orleans City Council to pass a Boycott Divestment and Sanctions bill, in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

The bill passed, but was met with backlash from Zionist groups.

The wording of the bill had not explicitly named Israel, opting instead to target "human-rights violators," but was nonetheless subjected to counter-lobbying by Zionist groups, who claimed the city council had been tricked by NOPSC.

Shortly after passing the bill, the city council rescinded it.

Geller is a spokesperson for Palestine Action, an activist group which opposes companies that it accuses of supplying weaponry to Israel, principally Elbit Systems.

Geller has used his platform with the group to promote the use of direct action tactics, including the occupation of Elbit premises, to prevent their manufacture of military technologies.