What I want to highlight is that the idea behind using art as a means of political expression is not a new concept. I would argue that for years artists have been using art as a way to politically express how they feel about the society they live in. Originally, I wanted to talk about the history of art and activism. Since, activism is a recent term it is difficult to search for historical information using only the term. You have to think outside the box a little bit to explore the historical significance behind art and activism. I started doing some searching on protest art. I feel like many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the large amount of protest art that was produced during the 1960s in the United States. The 1960s was a turbulent time with the Civil Rights movement and the increasing number of opposition against the Vietnam War. What often may come to mind is using visual art as a form of activism, but I also think that in our discussion we need to include other forms like art like music or literature. I want to expand on the idea that visual art is the only way that artists express themselves politically about a subject.
Above is a link that highlights some examples of political art, that were used in a exhibition at Whitney Museum in New York.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-boden/art-activism-1930s-today_b_1098260.html
For this link above, I like how the author mentioned the Great Depression, because there was a lot of great protest art that came out of this period. For the purpose of this blog assignment, I will first look into historical examples of art and activism. I cannot pick every example of act as activism, but I will try to get a good range of examples from different groups of people and different time periods throughout history. I will leave this discussion with the image of “Roustabouts” (1934) by Joe Jones. I will leave you with a couple of questions to consider. Is this painting an example of political expression? What do you think Jones is trying to tell his audience? I think that this painting brings up interesting questions about what should be considered as protest or activism art?
Image from: https://www.stlmag.com/culture/A-Working-Class-Artist-is-Something-to-Be/
Artivism in the Digital Age 