Protest Art in America

A Brief History of Protest Art

From the Dadaists to Guerrilla Girls, here are the most politically impactful artists of the last century.

RACHEL MACFARLANE07 MARCH 2017

Reference Site URL - https://www.format.com/magazine/features/art/brief-history-protest-art

In the current political climate, artists are finding ways to be involved in politics. With an American administration that called the support of art and humanities not “prudent”, the creative population are taking it upon themselves to prove that art plays a vital role in society.

The result has been everything from individual actions, like Richard Prince’s denouncement of his work owned by Ivanka Trump, to exhibitions like The Knockdown Center’s Nasty Women in Queens, New York that donated artwork sales to Planned Parenthood.

As people are called into action on the street, some artists may want to put down the brushes, shut their laptops, and join. But they can also use their talent and vision to aid a movement. For example, artist Christo decided to walk away from a project that has cost $15 million of his own money, as well as over 20 years to create, in what the New York Times called “the art world’s biggest protest yet.” Action from other artists seems imminent...

Examples of Protest Art -

Hannah Höch, “Untitled (Large Hand Over Woman’s Head)”, 1930, Photomontage via Artsy

"How Could I Have Known" by Cabell Molina, part of the Untitled Space's "One Year of Resistance" exhibition. Credit: Courtesy The Untitled Space

Brought to you by CNN - 

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/trump-one-year-art-action-day/index.html

Aileen Kwun, CNN

This weekend marks the first anniversary of Donald Trump's inauguration. It also marks the first anniversary of the Women's March his election inspired, the largest single-day protest in the nation's history.


To memorialize the occasion, artists across the country are taking part in the first Art Action Day, a patchwork of public events, workshops, and performances happening across the US. Hoping to reclaim the day for artistic expression, the initiative is being promoted under the slogan "Art is Essential to Democracy."...

Mexican Muralists
Muralists for the Mexican Communist Support

In North America during the 1920s, the Mexican Muralists were in a revolution against tyrannical industrialization. They intended to protect workers’ rights. Artists such as Diego Rivera were painting large scale public frescos illustrating the strife of the proletariat. The group aligned under Leninist ideas and engaged with politics through the standards of the history of painting. They replicated traditional painting strategies most notably painting large scale frescoes. Like Renaissance artists, they communicated to masses of people through their didactic and powerful scenes.

Jacob Lawrence
African American Social Painter

Jacob Lawrence is one of America’s most important visual artists. He made an illustrative series of works focusing on historical moments capturing racial inequality. The image depicted above is part of his massive 60-piece painting collection called The Migration Series. The series depicts the causes, turmoil, and results, of the great migration of African-Americans from the South to North Eastern/Central cities. The migration took place after Jim Crow threatened their lives and equalities in the south. Lawrence painted tirelessly on cardboard and simple wood with colorful tempera paint. The paintings express moments of the journey including warmer moments showing family and camaraderie. But most powerfully, he described the moments of violence, and oppression both in the South and in the North. Lawrence went on to make several more series on social-historical issues and was a prolific contributor to American Art...

To memorialize the occasion, artists across the country are taking part in the first Art Action Day, a patchwork of public events, workshops, and performances happening across the US. Hoping to reclaim the day for artistic expression, the initiative is being promoted under the slogan "Art is Essential to Democracy."...