The document discusses how art and politics are closely intertwined, using examples from Roman emperor Augustus and modern politicians. It explains how Augustus used portraits like the Augustus of Primaporta sculpture to communicate his ideology and vision of the Pax Romana. Similarly, modern politicians carefully craft their public images to convey their agendas.

1. Art and Politics
Introduction to Eastern and Western Art

2. “All art is propaganda.
It is universally and inescapably propaganda;
sometimes unconsciously,
but often deliberately, propaganda.”
- Upton Sinclair (Pulitzer Prize Winning Author, 1878 - 1968)

3. Augustus of Primaporta
(Ancient Roman), 1st
Century CE,
Marble, 2.03 meters high

4. Augustus and the power of images
Today, politicians think very carefully about how they will be photographed.
These images tell us a lot about the candidate, including what they stand for
and what agendas they are promoting. Similarly, Roman art was closely
intertwined with politics and propaganda. This is especially true with
portraits of Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire; Augustus
invoked the power of imagery to communicate his ideology.
One of Augustus’ most famous portraits is the so-called Augustus of
Primaporta (the sculpture gets its name from the town in Italy where it was
found in 1863). At first glance this statue might appear to simply
resemble a portrait of Augustus as an orator and general, but this
sculpture also communicates a good deal about the emperor’s power
and ideology. In fact, in this portrait Augustus shows himself as a great
military victor and a staunch supporter of Roman religion. The statue also
foretells the 200 year period of peace that Augustus initiated, called the Pax
Romana.
Retrieved fromhttps://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/roman/early-
empire/a/augustus-of-primaporta

5. Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People,
oil on canvas, 1830, 2.6 x 3.25m (Louvre, Paris)

6. Although Delacroix completed Liberty Leading the People during same year in which
the event occurred, it is, at its core, a history painting. Indeed, Delacroix depicts an
event from the July Revolution of 1830, an event that replaced the abdicated King
Charles X (r. 1824-30)—a member of the Bourbon family and the younger brother of
the guillotined King Louis XVI (r. 1774-1792)—with Louis Philippe I (r. 1830-48), the
so-called Citizen King. This uprising of 1830 was the historical prelude to the June
Rebellion of 1832, an event featured in Victor Hugo’s famous novel, Les Misérables
(1862), as well as the musical.
Delacroix’s painting at first seems to be overpowered by chaos, but on closer
inspection, it is a composition filled with subtle order. The first thing a viewer may
notice is the monumental—and nude to the waist—female figure. Her head is shown
in profile—like a ruler on a classical coin—and she wears atop her head a Phrygian
cap, a classical signifier of freedom. This is an important bit of costuming—in
ancient Rome, freed slaves were given one to wear to indicate their newly liberated
status, and this headwear became a symbol of freedom and liberty on both sides of
the Atlantic Ocean during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Clearly, this figure is not meant to be a portrait of a specific individual. Instead,
she serves as an allegory—in this instance, a pictorial device intended to
reveal a moral or political idea—of Liberty. In this, she is similar to an example
familiar to those in the United States, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty
(1886). Clearly, this monumental statue is not a portrait of a woman named Liberty
who wears a Roman toga, carries a torch, and an inscribed tablet. Instead, she
represents an idea. The same is true of Delacroix’s painted Liberty.
Retrieved from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/later-europe-and-
americas/enlightenment-revolution/a/delacroix-liberty-leading

7. Forbidden City (Beijing, China), 1420 CE, Complex of 980 Buildings

8. The Forbidden City was the political center of China for over 500 years. After its
completion in 1420, the Forbidden City was home to 24 emperors, their families and
servants during the Ming (1368–1644) and the Qing (1644–1911) dynasties. The last
occupant (who was also the last emperor of imperial China), Puyi (1906–67), was
expelled in 1925 when the precinct was transformed into the Palace Museum.
Although it is no longer an imperial precinct, it remains one of the most important
cultural heritage sites and the most visited museum in the People’s Republic of
China, with an average of eighty thousand visitors every day.
The construction of the Forbidden City was the result of a scandalous coup
d’état plotted by Zhu Di, the fourth son of the Ming dynasty’s founder Zhu
Yuanzhang, that made him the Chengzu emperor (his official title) in 1402. In order to
solidify his power, the Chengzu emperor moved the capital, as well as his own army,
from Nanjing in southeastern China to Beijing and began building a new heart of the
empire, the Forbidden City.
The architectural style reflects a sense of hierarchy. Each structure was designed in
accordance with the Treatise on Architectural Methods or State Building Standards
(Yingzao fashi), an eleventh-century manual that specified particular designs for
buildings of different ranks in Chinese social structure.
Retrieved from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/south-east-se-asia/china-
art/a/forbidden-city

9. Palace of Versailles (French Baroque), 1664 - 1710

10. When the King of France, Louis XIV, first decided to build a new palace and move his
court out of Paris, there was nothing on his chosen site at Versailles but a smallish
hunting lodge. Today, the palace stands as a prime example of the over-the-top
excesses of the French nobility that led to the French Revolution.
Thanks to the team of Louis le Vau (architect to the aristocracy), André le Nôtre
(landscape designer extraordinaire), and Charles le Brun (über-fashionable interior
decorator and painter), Louis XIV’s enormous and stylish palace was completed 21
years after it was begun in 1661 allowing Louis (and his closest friends, family
courtiers, servants and soldiers—all 20,000 of them) to officially set up court there (by
that point, the next superstar architect, Jules Hardouin Mansart, had taken up the
design reins). Enormous is no joke. The place has 700 rooms, 2,153 windows, and
takes up 67,000 square meters of floor space.
Over and above anything else, Versailles was meant to emphasize Louis’s
importance. After all, this is the guy that called himself The Sun King; as in,
everything revolves around me. “L’état, c’est moi” (I am the state), he said,
famously. By building Versailles, Louis shifted the seat of French government away
from the feuding, gossiping, trouble-making noble families in Paris. He had the whole
palace and its massive gardens built along an East/West axis so the sun would rise
and set in alignment with his home. And he filled both the palace and its gardens with
sculpture, painting, and fountains that all focused on…you guessed it…himself.
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/early-europe-and-colonial-americas/reformation-
counter-reformation/a/chteau-de-versailles

11. Pak Ryong Sam (North Korean Social Realism),
Farewell, 1977, Chosonhwa (ink on rice paper)

12. A new show of North Korean Socialist Realism paintings (July 2016) at American
University (Washington DC, USA) rewards long, close looks. Approaching the work,
there’s the initial feeling of being overwhelmed by the size—many are more than 10
feet wide. Then there’s the puzzlement that comes from seeing scenes that, to
anyone outside of North Korea, seem either overly melodramatic or entirely
implausible—workers smiling as they tap water from a dam, a soldier on horseback
leaping over a burning railroad bridge, a man holding onto a boat ready to fire his
pistol at an enemy. This, from a country the United Nations has said practices
“systematic, widespread, and gross human rights violations.”
But then there’s the wonder, and the feeling of unease as you realize these paintings
are more than just propaganda.
“I was fascinated by the art,” says artist and curator BG Muhn. “I thought, wow, this is
something I never knew about.”
Muhn spent five years putting together the display, gathering works from North
Korean museums and private collectors outside of the country. His goal was to show
the craft behind the politics.
“It’s beyond our imagination,” Muhn says. “[North Koreans] not only produce
nuclear weapons … they admire art.”
Retrieved from https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/north-korea-propaganda-art-socialist-realism-
display/

13. Chinese Cultural
Revolution
Poster, 1967

14. The Chinese Cultural Revolution was a decade-long period of political and
social chaos caused by Mao Zedong’s bid to use the Chinese masses to
reassert his control over the Communist party. Mao’s decision to launch the
“revolution” in May 1966 is now widely interpreted as an attempt to destroy his
enemies by unleashing the people on the party and urging them to purify its ranks.
When the mass mobilisation kicked off party newspapers depicted it as an epochal
struggle that would inject new life into the socialist cause. “Like the red sun rising in
the east, the unprecedented Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is illuminating the
land with its brilliant rays,” one editorial read.
In fact, the Cultural Revolution crippled the economy, ruined millions of lives and
thrust China into 10 years of turmoil, bloodshed, hunger and stagnation.
Gangs of students and Red Guards attacked people wearing “bourgeois clothes” on
the street, “imperialist” signs were torn down and intellectuals and party officials were
murdered or driven to suicide.
After violence had run its bloody course, the country’s rulers conceded it had been a
catastrophe that had brought nothing but “grave disorder, damage and
retrogression”. An official party reckoning described it as a catastrophe which had
caused “the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the party, the
country, and the people since the founding of the People’s Republic” in 1949.
Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/11/the-cultural-revolution-50-years-on-all-you-
need-to-know-about-chinas-political-convulsion

15. J. Howard Miller (USA), We Can Do It!,
Poster, 1943

16. This poster, produced by Westinghouse during World War II for the War
Production Co-Ordinating Committee, was part of the national campaign in
the United States to enlist women in the workforce. In the face of acute
wartime labor shortages, women were needed in the defense industries, the
civilian service, and even the armed forces. Publicity campaigns were aimed
at encouraging those women who had never before held jobs to join the
workforce. Poster and film images glorified and glamorized the roles of
working women and suggested that a woman’s femininity need not be
sacrificed. Women were portrayed as attractive, confident, and resolved to
do their part to win the war. Of all the images of working women during World
War II, the image of women in factories predominates. Rosie the Riveter--the
strong, competent woman dressed in overalls and bandanna--was introduced
as a symbol of patriotic womanhood. The accoutrements of war work--
uniforms, tools, and lunch pails--were incorporated into the revised image of
the feminine ideal.
Retrieved by https://www.wdl.org/en/item/2733/

17. El Lissitzky (Russian Constuctivism), Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge,
Poster, 1919

18. Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge remains one of Lissitzky’s best-known works. It
is also one of his earliest attempts to create a truly bold mix of propaganda and art.
This artwork was created as a support of the Red Army after the Bolsheviks started
the revolution in 1917. The red wedge represents the revolutionary force, while
the white part symbolizes the anti-communist white army. In this iconic piece, El
Lissitzky has cleverly used colors which have a lot of symbolic value and significance
in Russian history. The combination of red, white and black emphasizes the message
already encapsulated in the title of this piece. Colors and shapes are great
storytellers – the smooth walls of the white circle are attacked by the red triangle, just
like the Red Army had faced the defensive White Army. These powerful color
contrasts also create an uncertainty related to positive and negative space in the
painting. In addition to the main red and white forms, there are also tiny geometric
pieces resembling projectiles that go along with the text. In Beat the Whites with the
Red Wedge, painting and typography are ingeniously fused in order to create a truly
remarkable political statement.
Retrieved from https://www.widewalls.ch/artist/el-lissitzky/

19. Stewart Bremner (Scotland),
Vote Yes, 2014, Poster

20. In 2012, the campaign for Scottish independence began its first
referendum. The case to remain in the UK was made by the British
establishment, along with the main UK parties and very nearly the entire UK
media. They unofficially called themselves 'Project Fear'. Opposing them
was the largest grassroots movement in British history.
The result in September 2014 was a 55% vote to remain in the UK.
However, the lead of the 'No' vote had dropped by around 20% in the time.
Arguably, the referendum was won using illegal tactics, as well as a plethora
of promises that were instantly reneged after the vote.
Retrieved from http://www.stewartbremner.co.uk/political_art/gallery/indyref/

21. Shepard Fairey, Obama Hope (2008), Aung San Suu Kyi Freedom to Lead
(2009), Posters

22. Shepard Fairey, We The People, 2017, Posters

23. The street artist Shepard Fairey created a series of posters designed to
protest President Donald Trump.
Taking its name from the first line of the US constitution, the series 'We
the People' features portraits of Native Americans, African Americans,
Muslims, and Latinas depicted in Fairey’s trademark style with slogans
such as “Women are Perfect” and “Defend Dignity.”
“We thought they were the groups that had been criticized by Trump and
maybe were going to be most, if not necessarily vulnerable in a literal sense,
most feeling that their needs would be neglected in a Trump administration,”
Fairey told CNN.
Retrieved from https://news.artnet.com/art-world/shepard-fairey-releases-we-the-people-series-824468

24. Born of political frustrations,
Hong Kong’s Umbrella
Movement blossomed into a
vibrant exhibition of the
artistry and inventiveness of
the city’s youth. Pro-
democracy demonstrators
transformed a major swath of
the city into a canvas, with
much of the imagery focused
on the protesters’ adopted
symbol: the umbrella.
During the protesting,
umbrellas were used as
protection against tear gas
and become a symbol of
resistance.
Umbrella Installation, Hong Kong, 2014

25. Shen Shaomin (Chinese Conceptual Artist), The Summit, 2008 – 2016, Installation

26. Shen Shaomin (Chinese Conceptual Artist), The Summit, 2008 –
2016, Installation

27. They lie in state in plexiglass coffins - life-size sculptures of Russia’s
Lenin, North Korea’s Kim Il Sung, China’s Mao Zedong, and Vietnam’s
Ho Chi Minh, four very dead communist revolutionaries, most of them
regarded as among the worst dictators of the 20th century. On one side,
a fifth leader who made it into the 21st century, Fidel Castro, is shown in a
hospital bed. The installation, called The Summit, has pride of place at the
fifth edition of Art Basel Hong Kong (2016) and is impossible to miss as
visitors enter because it has fueled a selfie-taking commotion. The
installation by Chinese conceptual artist Shen Shaomin represents “an
imaginary encounter between the five,” he says. Shen hasn’t updated the
Castro portion to reflect the Cuban leader’s death last year, saying it’s “too
soon.”
The work, to the dispassionate, non-selfie-taking observer, might seem like
an epitaph to communism. But Shen, who has long been fascinated by death
and corpses, and who has vowed to make a sculpture out of his own
skeleton, says that the work is “a critique to capitalism and the financial
crisis.” It’s not clear that visitors to the art fair are receiving it that way, or
thinking about politics at all when they encounter it.
Retrieved from https://qz.com/938938/five-dead-dictators-are-attracting-selfie-takers-at-hong-kongs-art-basel/