Olympia

In many ways, art cannot be separated from the political environment of its time. As discussed in previous columns, artwork is used as a vehicle for protest everywhere—from Ai Weiwei’s “S.A.C.R.E.D,” to Barbara Kruger’s untitled photograph that states, “Your body is a battleground.” However, an important question remains unanswered: how exactly did art begin to be considered as a platform for opposition? In this final column, I want to discuss Édouard Manet’s “Olympia” as the origin of modern, political art—one that took Paris so off guard that Antonin Proust remarked, “If the canvas of the Olympia was not destroyed, it is only because of the precautions that were taken by the administration [of the 1865 Paris Salon].”

Your Body Is a Battleground

Powerful. Bizarre. Haunting. These are some of the words that come to mind with Barbara Kruger’s “Untitled (Your Body Is a Battleground.)” The frame crops the image in such a way that the viewer can see only the face of a woman. She stares directly ahead, towards the top—gazing at the viewer. A line starkly cuts through the middle of her symmetrical face: the left is a positive image; the right, a negative one. and the right is a negative production. And perhaps most startlingly, a sentence written in white letters and highlighted in red is superimposed upon the picture in three segments: “Your body is a battleground.”

Banksy and the Wall

A child draws a tall ladder on the wall. A young girl grasps onto numerous balloons, attempting to fly. Trapped inside the wall, a horse peeks pitifully out from its small square. Two children rendered in black and white stenciling play with a sand pail. However, they are not part of the beautiful, idyllic beach scene in color, shown through a tromp-l’oeil crack in the wall. This graffiti, found anywhere else, may seem cynical. But on Israel’s West Bank barrier, the pieces are no longer just examples of dark humor; they serve as a political tool, intended to shed further light on a particular social issue.

Yes Men Bhopal Legacy

“I am very, very happy to announce that for the first time, Dow is accepting full responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe. We have a $12 billion plan to finally, at long last, fully compensate the victims, including the 120,000 who may need medical care for their entire lives, and to fully and swiftly remediate the Bhopal plant site,” said the supposed Dow Chemical spokesman, Jude Finisterra, on Dec. 3, 2004, during an appearance on BBC World. If this news, aired on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, sounds too good to be true and too generous for a corporate company like Dow, it’s probably because it was.

Ai Weiwei and His S.A.C.R.E.D.

Sant’Antonin in Venice appears to be a church no more. Instead of pews, six austere iron boxes stand in the center of the church. Weighing nearly two and a half tons each and measuring five feet by twelve feet, they immediately grab visitors’ attention. In the beautiful chapel adorned with frescoes and sculptures, the  boxes eerily resemble coffins. They are aptly named S.A.C.R.E.D, each letter standing for a different box’s theme: Supper, Accusers, Cleansing, Ritual, Entropy, and Doubt. The mood is somber.

The piece was one of the exhibitions at the 2013 Venice Biennale by the well-known Chinese political dissident and artist Ai Weiwei. In 2011, in what many believe to be an attempt by the Chinese government to quell his revolutionary attitude, Ai spent 81 days in prison for alleged tax evasion. Once released, he set to work creating “S.A.C.R.E.D.,”  a six-stage installation that offers viewers his experience in solitary detention. Each box contains a diorama depicting Ai’s intimate moments spent in prison—sleeping, using the bathroom, and, of course, interrogation.