Description
Some 60 or 70 years ago, the idea of art as a comfort to middle- and upper-class tastes and values—more or less a visual soporific to be occasionally consumed, as needed—began to come under assault. The methodologies of the Fluxus Movement, the happenings of the ’60s, and various conceptual practices of the ’70s provided a ground from which artists such as Hans Haacke or Neo Rauch could make work that was critical of prevailing economic or political realities. In 1971, when a pointed artwork by Haacke caused the Guggenheim Museum to cancel his retrospective, the then-director of the museum wrote to Haacke to say that the institution’s policies “exclude active engagement toward social or political ends.” Unfortunately for the museum, a constantly expanding and ever-more vital ocean of such work has ensued. Using Nato Thompson’s Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century as our text, we will examine the work of artists whose work has intentionally called for a different social or