Art in Times of Crisis

Art has played a vital role in humanity’s experiences with hardship. Throughout history, artists have illustrated the unique challenges the most vulnerable members of our societies face in times of global, national, and communal crisis. Major crises often result in the rise and fall of political ideologies and shifts in the balance of power between nations. In light of the current global pandemic, I would like to reflect on the critical work past artists have done in crises to expose the social, physical and economic hardships the disadvantaged endure and to help societies reimagine the course of their futures based on this pain. The work of artists during this time of self-reflection (heightened by our current state of forced isolation) will both reflect and determine what ideas prevail as a result of this catastrophic but formative period in global history. 

Pablo Picasso’s Guernica is considered to be one of the most powerful anti-war paintings in history. Picasso painted this piece in response to the bombing of Guernica, a town in northern Spain during the Spanish Civil War. The governments of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy aided the Spanish Nationalists in the bombing. In tones of grey, harsh angles and the geometric distortions of Cubism, Picasso portrays war through the suffering of innocent civilians. The focal points of this piece are a weeping woman, a woman with a dead child, and a horse. In this profoundly powerful, 20-foot-long mural, Picasso illustrates excruciating hardships of the Spanish struggle for freedom and its toll on civilian life. Picasso painted this piece for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris and subsequently toured the piece around the world in order to spread its message. Art critic Jonathan Jones stated that Picasso “was trying to show the truth so viscerally and permanently that it could outstare the daily lies of the age of dictators.” Guernica will permanently exist in our memory of the 20th century for its ability to force the viewer to feel the pain of injustice for themselves.

Marc Chagall’s White Crucifixion depicts the crucifixion of Jesus Christ surrounded by contemporary imagery of the Nazi persecution of European Jewry. Chagall painted this piece in 1938 right before the outbreak of World War II. This painting emphasizes Jesus’ Jewish identity in an attempt to link the suffering of Jesus with that of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. In this painting, Chagall replaces Jesus’ traditional loincloth with a Jewish prayer shawl and his crown of thorns with a headscarf. The mourning angels surrounding the crucifixion are also adorned in traditional Jewish garments such as schmattas, kippahs, and shtreimels. The halo surrounding Jesus’ head is reflected in the light that surrounds the menorah at Jesus’ feet. On either side of the crucifixion scene, Chagall depicts the devastation of pogroms, including the destruction of a shtetl with refugees fleeing by boat and by foot, a temple and Torah burned to the ground, and a mother comforting her child. The scenes depicted reference the destruction of synagogues, Jewish homes, schools, and businesses on “Kristallnacht,” also known as “The Night of Broken Glass.” On this night, between November 9 and 10 of 1938, nearly 100 Jews were killed and 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. Chagall chose his subject matter with his intended audience in mind. He didn’t need to tell Jews what was happening in Europe; they already knew. Instead, Chagall translates the significance of these events to a Christian audience, alerting the world to the persecution and suffering of the Jewish people. 

American Artists during the Great Depression had to grapple with the idea that Western-style democracy may have failed. Capitalism had not produced the economic prosperity it had promised, and other prominent political ideologies were gaining appeal both in America and abroad.  Artists of this time attempted to both depict the hardships faced by the American people and define their own political perspectives on the crisis. Photographer Dorothea Lange worked to call attention to the economic adversity faced by the rural poor. As an employee of a New Deal program designed to provide aid to and raise public awareness for farmers, Lange documented the lives of migrant formers forced to move west as a result of the Great Depression and the devastation of the Dust Bowl. During this time, Lange captured the image of Florence Owens Thompson, a starving mother desperately trying to feed her seven children. Entitled Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, this image became an icon of the Great Depression and one of the most famous photographs in history. Lange took this photograph of the byproducts of capitalism while working for a government program aimed at healing these hardships. Lange’s employment by this New Deal agency demonstrates the American’s government’s newfound willingness to adopt more social welfare policies in order to ensure the continued survival of the capitalist system. 

Frida Kahlo’s childhood was set against the backdrop of a violent revolution, social upheaval, and nationalist fervor. The 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution resulted in the end of dictatorship in Mexico and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. By the time she was twenty, Kahlo was a member of the Mexican Communist Party. She was also a part of the Mexicanidad movement, a movement that combated the cultural destruction of colonialism by attempting to revive the indigenous religion, customs, and philosophy of ancient Mexico. Each of these movements played a role in Kahlo’s art as she engaged with themes of capitalism, exploitation, feminism, and sexuality in response to the nationalist revolution of her childhood. Kahlo painted Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick in 1954, yet she died before she could complete the painting. In this piece, Kahlo depicts herself being lifted up to heaven by two large hands, symbols for Marxism. Kahlo wears a leather corset, a reference to the orthopedic corset she wore after she broke her back in a tram accident. Kahlo was also diagnosed with Polio as a child and both of these ailments fueled her critiques of the healthcare system. In this painting, Kahlo is strangling an eagle, in reference to her continued criticism of the exploitive relationship between Mexico and the U.S., a country she identified as the ultimate capitalist oppressor. 

Mohamad Hafez is an architect and artist whose work tells the story of the Syrian refugee experience. His exhibition Homeland inSecurity consists of a series of actual refugee suitcases. Each of the suitcases models the experience of a Syrian refugee who has fled their destroyed homeland. The exhibit incorporates a mixture of these suitcase pieces with sculptures of surreal Middle Eastern cityscapes, constructed of intricately carved stone mixed with modern metal wiring. Hafez’s imagery and materials evoke the history of a once stunning and flourishing civilization now eradicated by the destruction of war. In his work, Hafez confronts the loss of his homeland while simultaneously attempting to spark empathy for Syrian refugees amongst Western audiences. Hafez’s work called attention not only to how we perceive Syrian refugees but also to the experience they fled: a civil war that has become the largest humanitarian crisis of the 20th century. Hafez describes his art as a “way to talk about a story and a pain of a civilization in ways that news channels [do] not.”

During the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis, Indonesia faced mass food shortages and unemployment, resulting in widespread rioting and protests.  The country’s ethnic Chinese population came to serve as Indonesia’s scapegoat. Chinese-Indonesians were beaten, raped, and over 1,000 were killed. Under President Suharto’s authoritarian rule, discriminatory laws ensured that Chinese-Indonesians remained second-class citizens and reports surfaced that Suharto’s regime allowed and even encouraged violence against this minority. The work of FX Harsono, a Chinese-Indonesian artist, calls attention to the violence of Suharto’s New Order government, particularly its treatment of the Chinese-Indonesian minority. In Burned Victims, a mixture of performance art and installation, Harsono set fire to five wooden sculptures in the shape of torsos, then walked around the burning wood with a placard that read “Riot.” This work commemorates the deaths of over a hundred Indonesians trapped in a shopping mall and burned to death by a mob in May of 1998. Through his art, Harsono criticized both discrimination against Chinese-Indonesians in the wake of this financial crisis and the authoritarianism of the Suharto regime. 

Despite the fact that many of these artists championed and criticized different political ideologies, they called attention to the evils of society, fought injustice, and contributed to their societies’ political dialogue. They all attempted to imagine a future in which their nation, community, or the world at large could emerge from crisis stronger and better equipped to ease human suffering. I hope that the art created in the midst of stay-at-home orders will comment on the nationalism that has led countries to battle for life-saving resources, the mistreatment of Chinese-Americans, the faults in our prison, healthcare, and education systems, and the danger of discrediting the truth. I hope that this art will help us conceive of a future where governments and citizens put compassion and equality above politics and profits.