Art and socialism

As we’ve seen with minority artists, because the group has experienced injustice,

the main agenda is reparative. If politics is about power—who wields it, who is

dispossessed or it—then the order of the day is to critique and deconstruct the

operations of power in order to renegotiate it more justly.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1897

Anonymous Jesse Owens, Berlin Olympics 1936

World War II home front poster. (Credit: David Pollack/Corbis/Getty Images)

Robert Frank, Charleston, South Carolina, 1955

Civil Rights Movement Timeline

Norman Rockwell, The Problem We All Live With, 1964

Six-year-old Ruby Bridges is escorted by four armed federal marshals as she becomes the first student to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, November 14, 1960.

Faith Ringgold, American People Series #20: Die, 1967

Colescott, an African-American painter, re-appropriates Picasso’s painting (as Picasso

lifted from African art.) He addresses stereotypes of black women’s sexuality in America,

and through the watermelon slice, makes reference to slavery as well.

Anna Deavere Smith, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992

(Optional: Watch the entire performance here)

Kara Walker, Slaughter of the Innocents (They Might be Guilty of Something), 2016

Brutal, shocking and filled with tragedy, Kara Walker’s re-telling of black history aims for the jugular. The artist made her

name with cut out silhouettes illustrating bloody, violent acts inflicted upon America’s black population, particularly women,

during the American Civil War. Many of the stories she unearths and spreads across gallery walls in all their theatrical horror

are ones history has tried to forget, including public lynching, sexual assaults and shootings, while innocent, helpless children

look on, signaling the wounds inflicted on generations that followed. Undoubtedly such controversial material has had its

detractors, but Walker is deliberately stirring up uncomfortable feelings about deeply embedded cultural trauma and pervasive

racism that should not be brushed under the carpet, as she explains, “It makes people queasy. And I like that queasy feeling.”

Kara Walker Slaughter of the Innocents (They Might be Guilty of Something), 2016

Kara Walker, Christ's Entry into Journalism, 2017

Writer Roxane Gay Weighs in on Kara Walker's Work

Kehinde Wiley, President Barack Obama, 2018 Amy Sherald, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 2018

Neville Brody, How To Get Arrested, 2014

Robert Longo, Untitled (Ferguson Police, August 13, 2014) Charcoal on paper, 2015

Headquarters of the NAACP in 1938

Dread Scott, A Man Was Lynched By Police Yesterday, 2016

Hank Willis Thomas, All Power to All People, 2017

A photograph of Breonna Taylor, projected onto the statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va., July 2020

Luba Lukova, Human Race, 2020, Silk-screen

Video

Question #1 – Please watch the above video (warning: very graphic content. Alternately, you

may just listen to the video), AND read the following article, and tell us your thoughts about

the case of Dana Schutz.

Dana Schutz, Open Casket, 2016

Question #2 – In 1993, The Whitney Biennial, one of the world most prestigious art shows, invited

plumbing store manager George Holliday to submit his 1991 video of the LAPD beating of motorist Rodney

King—as art. The museum presented it as is. Do you think they were right to do so for the sake of social

activism? This short text may be of interest.

Question #3 – After sufficient research, please share some Black Lives

Matter-inspired art that you value, and tell us why.