Social Protest/Affirmation

Protesting InjusticeMany Artists identify villains, honor heroes and promote causes with their artwork. Protest art is a form of affirmation because it based on respect for human dignity and the belief that change is possible.

Francisco Goya, The Executions of May 3, 1808, Spain, 1814, oil on canvas

● Painting is based on a true event that happened 6 years earlier● Citizens of Madrid unsuccessfully rose up against Napoleon’s army● Soldiers captured many of the rioters and executed them outside of the city● We can identify with the victims but not the soldiers, since we are led to

empathize with the victim’s pain.

Kathe Kollowitz, The Outbreak (“Losbruch”), Germany, 1903, Etching

Here peasants are depicted revolting, propelled by their wretched living conditions. Also note that Kollowitz depicts a woman leading the revolt, challenging gender roles and women’s passivity.

Kollowitz lived in Germany through 2 world wars, saw much pain and suffering and lost many loved ones.

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, oil on canvas

"My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. In the picture I am painting — which I shall call Guernica — I am expressing my horror of the military caste which is now plundering Spain into an ocean of misery and death." PABLO PICASSO

Daniel Richter, D.O.A XL, 2010, oil on canvas 2012

Leon Golub, Mercenaries I, Us, 1976, Acrylic on canvas

Here the mercenaries kill and capture for no ideology but mere sport. The victim is faceless.

Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, France, 1830 Oil on canvas.

This painting mixes reality, fantasy and ideals (Romanticism).The men are modelled after Parisians of the day, but Liberty is shown as a goddess.

Kara Walker, “They Wuz Nice White Folks While They Lasted” (Says one Gal to another), US 2001, Cut paper and projections on wall

Walker is an African American artist that makes life sized cut out silhouette imagery based on racist imagery from the slave era in the US.

Pepon Osorio, The Scene of the Crime (Whose Crime?), Puerto Rico/US 1993-1999, Mixed media installation

He has depicted a typical Puerto Rican house and littered it with stereotypes and narratives from the mass media, including assumptions that drugs and crime are culture/race based.

William Hogarth, Breakfast Scene (from the series Marraige a la Mode) England. 1745 Oil on canvas.

This artist satirized the English upper class, and ended up selling this painting mass produced, as prints, to the middle class. His work has comedy mixed with criticism and condemnation.