In 1932, Rivera was commissioned by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and her husband John D. Rockefeller Jr. to paint a mural for the lobby of Rockefeller Center. Rivera kept the original, approved plan for the two outer sides of the mural but changed the inner panel to include a critique capitalism. This inner panel ultimately included: Lenin, prostitutes, and the upper class drinking alcohol and covered in signs of venereal disease.
A new exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that showcases activism through art and media in the San Francisco Bay Area, gets its name, Take This Hammer, from a 1963 documentary about the author James Baldwin as he went around San Francisco, talking to African-Americans about what it was like for them in the city.
Iva Hladis was born in Czechoslovakia in 1965.
In 2005 her attention turned to the issue of global warming and world destruction with a new series of artworks titled “Origins Extinct”; assemblages of used computer chipboards, real botanicals, bugs, Czech glass beads, found objects, wires and pearls.
In October and November 2016, Breathing Lights illuminated the windows of hundreds of vacant buildings in Albany, Schenectady and Troy, NY. Warm light filled each window with a diffuse glow that mimicked the gentle rhythm of human breathing. Concentrated in neighborhoods with high levels of vacancy, Breathing Lights transformed abandoned structures from pockets of shadows into places of warmth.
Emel Mathlouthi (Arabic: آمال المثلوثي) is a Tunisian singer-songwriter best known for her protest songs "Ya Tounes Ya Meskina" (Poor Tunisia) and "Kelmti Horra" (My Word is Free) which became anthems for the Tunisian revolution and the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
Last June, Harris Reed became a member of the “Class of 2020” -- the crop of young fashion talent who graduated into an industry on rocky ground due to the pandemic. Over the eight months that have passed since earning his cap and gown at Central Saint Martins, Harris seems to have done a good job of finding his feet.
A gun violence prevention group has released videos in which they trick famous pro-gun figures into addressing a sea of empty chairs, representing children and teenagers who were shot and killed before they could graduate from high school.
Change the Ref, a gun safety organization founded by Patricia and Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin was murdered in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, released the videos Wednesday.
On the International Day of Education with students we have organized that creative action to ironizing the phenomenon of corruption in education.
We founded “University of Corrupted Sciences” as a symbol of all the issues that have characterized the education system in our transition years.
El Rey de la Ruina (The King of the Ruin) has become an act of powerful recognizable symbolism throughout Madrid. In terms of his popular heart symbolism, the artist chose the organ, a heart, as one of his favorite symbols because he was diagnosed when he was little with cardiomegaly, an abnormal increase in the volume of the heart, which is what inspired this organ as his prize art symbol.
The Kiss of Love campaign in India is a non violent protest against moral policing. It started out as a Facebook page but gained momentum across India when a mob of conservative, right-wing party members attacked and demolished a coffee shop in Kozhikode, Kerala. Their grounds to do so was public display of affection by couples inside the coffee shop, which they saw as immoral activity.
"The Red Power Movement of the 1960s and 70s was a time of profound social change and progress for American Indians in the United States and Canada. In her outspokenness about the injustices facing Indigenous people, Buffy Sainte-Marie also sang for peace, the environment, women and children—believing that art can have impact and make a difference.
Beijing-based artist Liu Yi is working on a series of black-and-white portraits he knows will never be shown in a Chinese gallery. His varied subjects — men and women, young and old, smiling and pensive — have one thing in common: They are Tibetans who have set themselves on fire to protest repressive Chinese rule.
The Overpass Light Brigade (Milwaukee, WI), has been working with Idle No More (WI) in order to give visibility to the cultural and environmental costs of opening up Northern Wisconsin to iron mining. The proposal will soon be voted on and likely passed by the conservative Wisconsin legislature which has been purchased by the Gogebic Mining Company.
Free Ai Weiwei street art campaign is a "guerilla methods" of political street art protest against the PRC government's secret detention of world famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei since April 3, 2011, organized by Hong Kong artists and art supporters, calling for the immediate release of the artist.
On the morning of April 24th, 2014, members of NYU's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine signed into several NYU dorms and slipped eviction notices under all of the doors. The eviction notices were written to raise awareness about the eviction of Palestinians from their homes by the Israeli government and stated very clearly at the bottom of the page that they were not real.
There are few artists more innocuous, more neutered, more universally loved and reviled than Thomas Kinkade. His soft-focus images present an idyllic vision of America and of Christianity, like Norman Rockwell without the blue-collar populism, where everything is beautiful, nothing hurts, and there’s always a warm fire going in the Lincoln-Log cabin just down the trail.
This satirical website ridicules hipster racism and black tokenism, using two fictional white characters - Sally and Johnny - who have many black friends. The webpage is fairly simple and features fictional testimonies by black people celebrating the stereotypes and innocuous, but prejudiced behavior of Sally and Johnny. There is also a section of submitted testimonies and hate mail/fanmail.