Category: Social and Political Struggles
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René Magritte’s unthinkable thoughts
In the tragic aftermath of World War I, Magritte turned his back on Academic history painting. Instead, the Belgian artist shows us life’s ambiguities, depicted in witty and thought-provoking ways.
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Miriam Schapiro: Feminism in pieces
The Woman’s Rights Movement inspired Miriam Schapiro to invent “femmage.” This feminist collage style mixes paint and fabric to celebrate the intimate, often-hidden stories of women’s lives.
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Jean Dubuffet’s stranger things
In the aftermath of World War II, French artist Jean Dubuffet began mixing paint with whatever he could scrounge up: string, tar, gravel, shards of glass. “Art should make us laugh a little and fear a little,” he said.
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Artist Betye Saar tells ghost stories
Saar creates hauntingly beautiful art that seduces us into thinking deeply about racism. Notably, she is one of the first American artists to focus on the chasm between the colonizer and the colonized.
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Why isn’t Norman Lewis famous?
Abstract Expressionism was the first American art style to achieve global recognition. It promised limitless artistic freedom. But limitless for whom? How many Black abstract expressionists can you name?
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Sheeler, Rivera, and the art of industry
Charles Sheeler and Diego Rivera immortalized Henry Ford’s revolutionary River Rouge Plant. Do their paintings exalt the efficiency of machines? Or warn us about living in a tech-driven society?
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George Bellows: Last stop, 59th Street
The lone tenement beneath New York City’s Queensboro Bridge looks strikingly out of place. Is it real? Or is it an architectural ghost, haunting the space where a neighborhood used to be?