Title: Activist artists | 11 famous protest art examples | Ruth Millington
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Activist artists | 11 famous protest art examples
Why is protest art important?
1. Dada & anti-war protest art
2. Diego Rivera & mural protest art
3. American artists protest the Vietnam War
4. Jacob Lawrence protests racial inequality
5. Keith Haring & AIDS activism
“Art is nothing if you don’t reach every segment of the people” – Keith Haring.
6. Paula Rego & abortion rights
7. Guerilla Girls & feminism
8. Ai Wei Wei & political protest art
“I believe the core value of an artist must be to express yourself freely and fight for the freedom of others” – Ai Wei Wei.
9. Nan Goldin protests drug money
10. Void One attacks government cuts
“I didn’t set out to make political art but art is a platform where I can vent my frustrations” – Void One.
11. Kara Walker & anti-empire protest art
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Content: The war changed art, turning artists towards activism. Yayoi Kusama may be celebrated these days for dots & pumpkins. But in the 1960s, at the height of the Vietnam War, she staged actions in New York, counteracting violence with activism in the form of naked body painting happenings and orgiastic love-ins. Her first Anatomic Explosion featuring naked dancers took place on 15 October 1968 opposite the New York Stock Exchange, and was prefaced by a press release that stated, ‘The money made with this stock is enabling the war to continue. We protest this cruel, greedy instrument of the war establishment.’ In 60 paintings Jacob Lawrence captured the journeys of millions of African-Americans who left the Jim Crow South in search of better lives elsewhere
4. Jacob Lawrence protests racial inequality
Jacob Lawrence grew up in Harlem during the Depression and he became an important commentator on the experiences and afflictions endured by African Americans. He aligned himself with the American school of social realism and Mexican muralist tradition to protest racial inequality. In his massive 60-piece painting collection called ‘The Migration Series’ he depicted the turmoil and moments of violence during the Great Migration. Sometimes referred to as the Black Migration, it was the movement of 6 million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1916 and 1970.