Art and CommitmentWhat is political art?

What is a committed artist?

Ilya Repin, Ploughman (Tolstoy), 1887. Felix Vallotton. Leo Tolstoy (La Revue blanche), 1895.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sartre, 1946.

Wols, Untitled (Sartre) from the series Visages, 1948.

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, 1793.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, 1767.

David, Oath of the Horatii, 1784.

Angelica Kauffmann, Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures, c. 1785.

David, The Death of Marat, 1793.

Engraved by James Aliprandi (after Domenico Pellegrini), The Death of John Paul Marat, 1794.

A. L. Dumoulin, Death of Marat, n.d.

Unknown, Death mask of Marat, n.d.

David, Drawing of Marat’s Death Mask, n.d.

George Hatot (Lumière Company), Film still from Marat, 1897.

Pablo Picasso, The Death of Marat, 1934.

Robert Wilson, Lady Gaga/Death of Marat, 2013.

Vik Muniz, from Pictures of Garbage, 2008.

David, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, 1801.

Francisco Goya, Third of May, 1808, 1814.

Goya, Disasters of War series, 1810-1820.

J.M.W. Turner, Slave Ship, 1840.

John Constable, Hay Wain, 1821.

Jean-François Millet, Gleaners, 1857.

Millet, Man with a Hoe, 1863.

Millet, Sower, 1850.

Portal, Saint-Lazare, Autun, France (details), 12th century CE.

Portal, Saint-Lazare, Autun, France (detail), 12th century

CE.Millet, Gleaners, 1857.

Limbourg Brothers, Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de

Berry, 1412–6.Millet, Sower, 1850.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Corn Harvest (August), 1565.

Van Gogh, Sower with Setting Sun, 1888.

Dorothea Lange, Florence Thompson with two of her seven children in a California migrant camp, 1936, and Filipinos Harvesting Lettuce, 1935.

Thomas Hart Benton, July Hay, 1943.Diego Rivera, Maguey, Agave, and Sisal Plants (mural detail), Palacio

Nacional de Mexico, 1951.

A. Plotnov, Gather All Harvest in Time, 1945.

Weng Yizhi, The hogs of the commune must be raised to be

fat and big! 1956.

Gustave Courbet, Stonebreakers, 1849.

Honoré Daumier, Gargantua, 1832.

Daumier, Rue Transnonain, 1834.

Daumier, Third Class Carriage, 1862–4.

Daumier, Untitled cartoon, n.d.

Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines, 1873.

Charles Marville, Photographs of Paris, n.d.

Edgar Degas, Ironers, 1884.

Degas, In a Café (Absinthe), 1873.

Picasso, Woman Ironing, 1904.

Picasso, Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1906. Mask, Fang culture, Gabon, 19th century CE.

Picasso, Bottle of Suze, 1912.

Picasso, Guernica, 1937.

Picasso, Guernica (detail), 1937.

Michelangelo, Pietà, 1498–9.

Kazimir Malevich, Peasant Woman with Buckets and Woodcutter, 1912.

Malevich, Sketches for Victory Over the Sun, 1913.

Malevich, Red and Black Square, 1915.

Malevich, Design for a Book Jacket and Speaker’s Backdrop for the Committees on Rural Poverty, 1918.

Soviet agit-prop trains, c. 1910s.

Soviet agit-prop trains, c. 1910s.

El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919.

El Lissitzky, “The New Man,” design for Victory Over the Sun, 1921.

El Lissitzky, Russische Ausstellung, 1929.

Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International, 1919–20.

Replica of Monument to the Third International on parade on May Day,Leningrad, 1925.

Käthe Kollwitz, Outbreak, 1903.

Kollwitz, "Brot!” 1924.

Kollwitz, "Never Again War," 1924.

Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830.

Max Pechstein, Call to All Artists, 1919.

Otto Dix, The Art of War, 1924.

Gustav Klutsis, “We will fulfill the plan of great endeavors,” 1930.

World War II-era recruiting poster, United States.

Vietnam War and Civil Rights-era posters and photographs, c. 1960s–70s.

Situationist slogans and public demonstrations, Paris, May 1968.

Poster from Occupy Wall Street movement, c. 2011.

Posters from Occupy Wall Street movement, c. 2011.

Posters from Black Lives Matter movement, c. 2012.