Protest art I’m thinking about right now — Part 1 Visual Arts
As the Movement for Black Lives continues, I’ve started reflecting on the power for art to inspire folks to act. Black Lives Matter murals on the roads, creative picket signs, and 30-sec TikToks have been just some of the mediums used to inspire action in this moment. Seeing the abundance of art coming out of this moment inspired me to think back and consider the power of protest art in the mid to late 20th century. I started to reflect on the power these images once held and still do. As you check out the art I’ve been considering please comment below: What protest art has stuck with you during this movement?
Much of the iconography used to inspire Black Americans in the Black Panther Party was created by former Minister of Culture Emory Douglas. Inspired by the Black Arts Movement of the early 60s, Douglas used his skills in art, printmaking, and organizing to increase circulation of the Black Panther Party newspaper and engagement with the panther’s platform. While many images used today can be traced to the Black Panther Party, the image Douglas is most credited with is his depictions of the police as pigs.
In a conversation with the New York Times, Douglas recalls the story of the pig being used. He says, “Out of their conversations about the police came the definition of a pig: a no-nation beast that has no regard for rights, the law or justice and bites the hand that feeds it.” Huey Newton and Bobby Seale asked Douglas to draw an anthropomorphized pig for the newspaper. When creating the image, he decided to lean into the American depiction of pigs as dirty animals that are okay existing in their own filth. Since he created the image in the late 60s early 70s, this image has endured not only for American protests against the police but around the world as a symbol of corruption amongst law enforcement.
In the mid-80s to early 90s, research about HIV/AIDs was still very new. Treatment and drug options for AIDS were even fewer. But, the stigma for those in the LGBTQ community who contracted created a culture of silence. Politicians, local, state, and federal, were silent for the most part, refusing to allocate adequate resources to research institutions, public health organizations, and medical facilities as thousands died each year. In the midst of all this, artists and graphic designers Avaram Finkelstein, Brian Howard, Oliver Johnston, Charles Kreloff, Chris Lione, and Jorge Socarrás gathered in 1986 to support one another as their friends and loved ones died. Soon personal pain was channeled into political outrage and they decided to create a poster to raise awareness.
Inspired by the work of the Guerilla Girls and the Art Workers Coalition, the poster features a fuchsia triangle — a reference to the pink triangle used by Nazi Germany to identify gay people — against a black backdrop with the tagline Silence = Death underneath with a caption, “Why is Reagan silent about AIDS? What is really going on at the Center for Disease Control, the Federal Drug Administration, and the Vatican? Gays and lesbians are not expendable…Use your power…Vote…Boycott…Defend yourselves…Turn anger, fear, grief into action.” Quickly, this poster became a symbol for AIDS activism in this country. ACT UP adopted the poster for their direct action campaigns. While HIV/AIDS diagnoses do not automatically mean a death sentence anymore, Black and Brown communities still face barriers to HIV/AIDS related resources and treatment.
On September 6, 1936, A.L. McCamy was lynched in Dalton, GA. He was released that day from his one-year sentence after allegedly attempting to assault a 12-year-old white girl. A mob of about 200 white men surrounded the jail, forced the jailer to surrender the keys and Mr. McCamy, and shot him repeatedly. After hearing about the ninth lynching officially recorded in 1936, the NAACP headquarters decided to raise a flag with the sentence “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday” printed. The flag flew above the NAACP main offices near Union Square Park for two years, marking every day that white mobs lynched Black men around the country, calling to attention the federal government's silence around lynching.
In 2016 in the wake of unarmed shootings of Walter Scott, Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Reika Boyd, and many others, artist Dread Scott decided to update the flag adding “by the police.” The flag flew above the Jack Shainman Gallery during Scott’s 2016 exhibition. Like the NAACP, the gallery was forced to remove the flag from the front of the building once the landlord threatened eviction.
The rise of second-wave feminism in the mid to late 20th century brought along conversations about gender parity in cultural institutions as well as sexual assault and rape culture. These topics among others have been major focal points for Guerilla Girls since their founding in 1985. The feminist activist artist group create posters, billboards, performance art, and books, all while wearing gorilla masks in public to focus the public’s attention on their message rather than their bodies. Their first major work, Do Women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum, shocked the art world.
This masked collective has remained relevant and active since their founding 30 years ago. Due to their longevity they now act as a living archive marking the change that has, or more often, hasn’t happened in the past 30 years in various arts and culture industries. For example, they recently created a thirty-year-anniversary update on one of their early posters, a tally of women who had one-person exhibitions in NYC museums. The numbers changed but not all that much.
Although it’s currently most associated with the Black Power movement, clenched fists have been used as icons and gestures in various political protests like the French and Soviet Revolutions, the Anti-Vietnam war protests, Black Panther Party, and the Mexican Revolution. Often, the fist was used in action: smashing, holding, etc. Over time the raised clenched fist has been co-opted by many groups looking to signal a rising of the populace to overtake those in political, economic, or social power.
The form of the gesture changed with the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City where Tommie Smith and John Carlos each raised a black-gloved fist as the US National Anthem played. The fist then became a symbol of militancy as well. From that point on it didn’t need to be holding or doing anything, the fist itself held the power. In art, protests, advertisements, and flyers, the fist has also come to symbolize solidarity. Some wonder if it’s co-optation by the mainstream means the gesture may lose its potency.
