Sarah Urist Green: In the 1980s, when AIDS was devastating gay communities, members of the artist collective Gran Fury plastered images of bloody handprints around New York City. On walls and mailboxes, and on t-shirts, flyers, and posters, it was a campaign calling attention to the grossly inadequate response to the unfolding crisis by the local and national government. And it worked. In concert with other direct actions by members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT-UP, these efforts increased public awareness and effectively called authorities to account.

Less than a year later, the F. D. A had expanded clinical trials for seriously ill patients and sped up access to new, potentially life-saving drugs.

The members of Gran Fury and ACT-UP are part of a  long and continuing tradition of art and activism. Hi, I’m Sarah Urist Green, and  this is Crash Course Art History.

[1:00] [THEME MUSIC]

[1:08] Sarah Urist Green: Throughout this series, we’ve touched on a wide variety of artworks that advocate for change. But today, we’re devoting a whole episode to it. This type of artwork often compels us to pay attention to what we might not otherwise notice, revealing struggles that are overlooked, or even invisible. For example, UK-based artist Liz Crow’s performance piece, “Bedding Out,” drew attention to the ways her country’s policy choices were harming disabled people like herself.

As a result of cuts to social welfare services, disabled people faced financial struggle, mental health issues, and higher rates of hate crimes—all made worse by false narratives that they didn’t actually need benefits and  were unwilling—rather than unable—to work. To bring these struggles to light, Crow  live-streamed herself spending 48 hours in bed, allowing visitors – both online and off – to discuss the work and the politics it represented. Her goal was to illustrate how hard disabled and chronically ill people often have to work to participate in public life, and the unseen toll it takes on their bodies—things that are frequently ignored when governments cut funding for social services.

And it made an impact. The livestream of her April 2013 performance was viewed in over fifty countries by thousands of people. But performance art is far from the only type of activist art.

Consider this piece by indigenous American artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, called “Trade (Gifts for Trading Lands with White People).” Above a painting of a canoe, she  hangs American sports memorabilia, dolls, and other trinkets featuring stereotypes of Native Americans. The canvas, too, was created from newspaper clippings, advertisements, food labels, and other material featuring  offensive Native American caricatures. The work was a response to the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in North America.

Smith said that if the piece could speak, it would say: “Why won’t you consider trading the land we handed over to you for these silly trinkets that so honor us? Sound like a bad deal? Well, that’s the deal you gave us.” In this way, Smith’s work uses irony and humor to offer a critique of the historic mistreatment of Native Americans  and its legacy in the present day.

The artist Tan Zi Xi also puts found objects to use in her work, “Plastic Ocean.” Inspired and horrified by the news of the Pacific Ocean’s sprawling, floating “garbage patches,” she collected over twenty thousand pieces of plastic waste to create this immersive experience, which opened in her home country of Singapore in 2016. Visitors entered a space with plastic trash hanging above them, as if they were beneath a giant ocean garbage patch. It created a sense of being surrounded and overwhelmed by waste, unable to look away.

Another artist who makes bold statements with his work is the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Let’s check out his piece, “Sunflower Seeds.” This work consists of one hundred million hand-crafted porcelain sunflower seeds, and you can see it here scattered across the floor of Tate Modern in London. Now these are life-size, so small – 1.5 centimeters small.

Now, imagine sculpting and painting one hundred million of these tiny seeds to fill the floor of a gallery. His choice of material was intentional. Porcelain was one of China’s earliest major exports.

And historically, artisans have worked  in strenuous conditions to produce it. Today, China is the largest exporter in the world, not just of porcelain but of electrical equipment, toys, textiles, and all kinds of stuff we use in our daily lives. Human rights organizations – and Ai Weiwei himself – have criticized China’s factories for forced  labor and overcrowded conditions.

Which brings us back to “Sunflower Seeds.” Ai Weiwei didn’t order these from a large-scale factory – but instead commissioned thousands of individual artisans to craft them caringly by hand in Jingdezhen, where the first porcelain centers in China developed centuries ago. The way each “seed” blends in with  the rest calls to mind not only the many individuals who made this  artwork but also the many, many others who labor anonymously to create products labeled “Made in China.” What’s more, during China’s Cultural Revolution, propaganda often depicted leader Mao Zedong as the sun and the citizens of the People’s Republic of China as sunflowers turned toward him. Ai’s millions of seeds not only question labor practices, but also evoke the complex history and dynamics of the Chinese people, as individuals and a collective.

But, here’s the thing. Highlighting injustice is risky business. Not everyone wants to hear the  critiques artists have to share.

In 2011, Ai Weiwei was detained by Chinese authorities for 81 days without any formal charges. And it wasn’t the first or last time Ai had  encountered legal pushback; earlier that same year, the government shut down an exhibition of his work and demolished his Shanghai studio. Five years after his imprisonment, Ai created vivid large-scale dioramas capturing his experience behind bars.

He called them “S. A. C. R. E. D.,” an acronym  for the six parts of the work: Supper, Accusers, Cleansing, Ritual, Entropy, and Doubt.

Together, they revealed the realities and indignities of his incarceration. The doors that appear to lead inside the rooms are false. Visitors can only observe the scenes through peepholes in the wall, turning them into helpless onlookers of humiliations rarely seen by the public.

We can see in “S. A. C. R. E. D” and throughout Ai’s work, how art can shine a light on injustices previously hidden in the shadows.

In this case, even after numerous attempts to silence their creator. There’s also a long tradition of activists engaging with pre-existing artworks as part of their protests. Like, in October 2022, Vincent Van Gogh started trending on social media – but not for the usual reasons.

Environmental activists from the group Just Stop Oil had dumped soup onto Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” painting, and the videos went viral. Soup cans in hand, they spoke passionately,  urging viewers to feel the same outrage over the destruction of the planet that we do over the destruction of art. And although the artworks weren’t permanently harmed, Just Stop Oil ignited controversy.

Some saw it as a publicity stunt, while others felt the activists were continuing a longstanding artistic tradition of resistance. Because actually, the destruction of famous icons and artworks — what we call iconoclasm — is nothing new. We know the ancient Romans did it.

And in the Byzantine Empire during the 8th and 9th centuries, thousands of Christian artworks were destroyed because of their believed immorality. Later, the French Revolution saw buildings, paintings, and manuscripts burned in an effort to symbolically topple the French aristocracy. Of course, Byzantine iconoclasts and French rebels didn’t have smartphones to document this.

Though I’m sure if they had, they would have taken advantage of the opportunity. Sometimes people create art to make a  point, but sometimes they destroy it, and that can have just as  much of an impact, or more. The destruction of art sends  incredibly strong messages about the images and ideas people want — and don’t want — in their societies.

The fact that iconoclasm is still happening today and is still capturing our attention, goes to show how central art is to how we see ourselves, and  how we construct the world we want to live in. Art helps us see the world differently – both in its creation, and occasionally, its destruction. As we’ve seen, art can be a powerful tool to help us grow more connected, make our public conversations richer, and  strengthen movements for justice around the world.

At sometimes great risk to themselves, artists challenge the status quo and help us see the world as it really is — and as it could be. In our next episode, we’ll discuss the ways we can protect and preserve artwork, so that future generations can learn these lessons, too. I’ll see you then.

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Art History which was filmed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields and was  made with the help of all these engaging people. If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever, you can join our community on Patreon.