Exploring Art: A Global, Thematic Approach

Chapter 11Social Protest and

Affirmation

Protests Against Military Action

– Anti-war art 200-year history•The Executions of May 3, 1808, from 1814– Based on Goya’s recollections of the Spanish standing up to Napoleon

– Spanish executed to suppress revolt

– Anti-war art in the 20th century•Käthe Kollewitz, The Outbreak, 1903•Anti-war art further emerged after WWI and WWII

Goya, Executions of May 3, 1808. 1814

Käthe Kollwitz, Outbreak, 1903

Käthe Kollwitz's interest in ordinary people—in peasants, workers, weavers, mothers—is best served by the form of the print, its physicality, its materiality, which also suit her realist tendencies, however symbolic or allegorical her subjects.

German artist Georg Grosz in 1918. It's called either "Fit for Active Duty" or "A-1: The Miracle workers,"

depending on who you talk to.

JOHN HEARTFIELD. Goering the Executioner.

Photomontage cover for AIZ. Germany, 1933. Reproduced from John

Heartfield, by Wieland Herzfelde Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1964. © 2004 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New

York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

Echo of a Scream. 1937. Painted by David Alfaro Siqueiros. Enamel on wood,

Many of his paintings such as this focus on how the past, present, and future of the Mexican revolution is affecting its people. This piece was inspired by his experiences during active combat and his observations of suffering. By illustrating a baby, this piece emphasizes the internal suffering of the innocent victims of the Revolution.

Motherwell's path to becoming an abstract artist was through philosophy, art history, and poetry. He studied at Stanford, Harvard, and then Columbia, where he was introduced to émigré … his particular genesis as an abstractionist has its basis in Mallarmé, whose dictum "To paint, not the thing, but the effect it provides" was pivotal.

In 1937 in San Francisco, he heard André Malraux speak at a rally on the Spanish Civil War. There, he found a great moral issue that would drive his work for years. In his words, it was the realization "that the world could, after all, regress." His Elegies to the Spanish Republic have been a vehicle to express what Motherwell has called "a funeral song for something one cared about" in abstract, visual terms.

Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 1961Robert Motherwell (American, 1915–1991)

These abstract meditations on life and death share a common structure in compositional form. The horizontal white canvas is divided by two or three vertical black bars or bands. Those are punctuated at various intervals by ovoid shapes—stark blots of black. The whole is a dialogue of formal opposites—straight, curved, black, white—executed in a painterly, brushy manner in which the act of creation is evident. For Motherwell, as for so many other Abstract Expressionists, this is a search for universal content that stems from form itself: in his words, "…the Elegies use an essential component of pictorial language that is as basic as the polyphonic rhythms of Medieval or African or Oriental music."

Robert Motherwell - Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 34, 1953-54

TOMATSU SHOMEI. Woman with Keloidal Scars (from the series 11:02 – Nagasaki). Gelatin Silver Print,

11.5" 16". Japan, 1966.

exposes the mutilation of victims who survived the atomic bombing.

Fighting for the Oppressed

– Strategies for protesting oppression in artwork•Beauty•Illustration•Narrative•Shock •Humor

DELACROIX, Liberty Leading the People, France, 1830

Lewis Hine

• Ben Shahn created this poster to protest the execution of Vanzetti and Sacco who were electrocuted in 1927.

• He chose as the text a statement Vanzetti made to a reporter shortly before their deaths. A few months later, in February 1928, the Atlantic Monthly published a detailed account of Vanzetti's last conversation with his attorney the night before the executions.

Ben Shahn, The Passion of Sacco and Vanzettim

1931-32Ferdinando Nicola Sacco (April 22, 1891 – August 23, 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (June 11, 1888 – August 23, 1927) were two Italian-born laborers and anarchists who were tried, convicted and executed via electrocution on August 23, 1927 in Massachusetts for the 1920 armed robbery and murder of a pay-clerk and a security guard in Braintree, Massachusetts.On August 23, 1977, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis signed a proclamation declaring, "Any stigma and disgrace should be forever removed from the names of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. We are not here to say whether these men are guilty or innocent. We are here to say that the high standards of justice, which we in Massachusetts take such pride in, failed Sacco and Vanzetti."

Jacob Lawrence, No. 36: During the Truce Toussaint Is Deceived and Arrested by leClerc. LeClerc Led Toussaint to Believe That He Was Sincere, Believing That When Toussaint Was Out of the Way, the Blacks Would Surrender, USA, 1937-

38Toussaint led a slave revolt in Haiti that resulted in the

abolition of slavery there in 1794.

Faith Ringgold, Bitter Nest #2: Harlem Renaissance Party 1988

Acrylic on canvas, dyed, painted and pieced fabric 94 x 82"

YE YUSHAN AND A TEAM OF SCULPTORS FROM THE SICHUAN ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, CHONGQING. The Rent Collection Courtyard (detail).

Clay, life-size figures. China (Dayi, Sichuan), 1965.

Ed Kienholz. The State Hospital (interior). 1966.

As in The Rent Collection…realism makes the sculpture seem more immediate to the viewer.

CILDO MEIRELES. Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project. Screen print on Coca-Cola bottles.

Brazil, 1970. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Lelong, New York.

Ester Hernandez, Sun Mad, USA, 1981 color serigraphRaisin growers used insecticides that contaminated

groundwater.Subverts familiar imagery.

"Unflattering images of African Americans have been common in popular culture over the past 150 years - Aunt Jemima, a domestic servant whose title of 'aunt' was a commonly used term of subordination and familiarity for domestic servants, nannies, and maids. Aunt Jemima is a caricatured jolly, fat character who has been used recently to sell commercially prepared pancake mix. Saar used three versions of Aunt Jemima to question and turn around such images. The oldest version is the small image at the center, in which a cartooned Jemima hitches up a squalling child on her hip. In the background, the modern version shows a thinner Jemima with lighter skin, deemphasizing her Negroid features. The older one makes Jemima a caricature, while the new one implies she is more attractive if she appears less black..

Betye Saar, "The Liberation of Aunt Jemima," 1972

"The middle Jemima is the largest figure and the most emphasized. Her checked and polka-dotted clothing is very bright and colorful. Her black skin makes her white eyes and teeth look like dots and checks, too. This Jemima holds a rifle and pistol as well as a broom. A black-power fist makes a strong silhouette shape in front of all the figures, introducing militant power to the image. The idea of Aunt Jemima, in any of its forms, can no longer seem innocuous. Saar enshrined these images in a shallow glass display box to make them venerable. Symmetry and pattern are strong visual elements."

KARA WALKER. “They Waz Nice White Folks While They

Lasted” (Says One Gal to Another). Cut paper and

projections on wall, 14' 20'. USA, 2001. Courtesy Brent Sikkema, New York City.

Affirming the values of the oppressed

• Increase cohesiveness• Bolster sense of identity– Late Gothic Italy– Bahia, Brazil– Aboriginals

Lorenzetti, Allegory of Good Government, 1338

Questioning the Status Quo

– The social environment•A critical look at the “normal”

– Hogarth

•Satire, criticism, direct or indirect investigation of factors that reinforce the status quo, including government, the economy, and popular wisdom

WILLIAM HOGARTH. Breakfast Scene (from the series Marriage a la Mode), England, c. 1745. Oil on canvas, 28” X 36”.

National Gallery, London. C. National

Gallery Collection; By kind permission of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London/Corbus.

MAGDALENA ABAKANOWICZ. Backs. 80 pieces, burlap and glue, each over life-size. Poland, 1976–1982. © Magdalena Abakanowicz. Courtesy of

Marlborough Gallery, New York.

Jenny Holzer is famous for her short statements, formallycalled ‘truisms’. some are common myths while othersare just phrases on random subjects in the form of slogans.the sayings include:

‘a man can't know what it's like to be a mother’,

‘men are not monogamous by nature’,

‘money creates taste’,

‘a lot of professionals are crackpots’,

‘enjoy yourself because you can't change anything anyway’,

‘freedom is a luxury not a necessity’,

‘don't place too much trust in experts’.

Art vs. Politics

• Further departure from the status quo

• Political removal of works of art• Salvadoran artist Miguel Antonio Bonilla– Political and artistic risks

Gustave Courbet. The Stone Breakers. 1849 (desroyed during World War II).

Oil on canvas, 5 feet, 5 inches x 7 feet, 10 inches.

The men breaking the stones are ordinary road workers, presented almost life-size. Courbet does not idealize the struggle for existence; he simply says, "Look at this."

Discussion Topics

• Do you think art should question the status quo?

• Do you think protest art reaches a large enough audience to be effective?

• Does artwork that depicts oppressed people end up exploiting them, though artists claim it helps these people?

• What is the relationship between protest art and propaganda? Can propaganda be art?