Art as Protest

...More than four hundred carefully selected pictures are certainly graphic reminders of the failures and injustices of society, and that one must not stop working for the elimination of at least the worst outrages...

...His most recent book is "Degas Pastels...

...It refers to works by contemporary painters, sculptors, draftsmen, and printmakers who are applying their skills to the graphic and public proclamation of their abhorrence of war, racism, exploitation, and other social ills...

...That this is not so can be gathered from The Indignant Eye: The Artist as Social Critic in Prints and Drawings from the Fifteenth Century to Picasso, whose well-informed author, Ralph E. Shikes, points out that biting social satire can be found in creations by ancient Egyptians who "often ridiculed the more pretentious actions of men by portraying them as animals...

...As Shikes' lucid text and the numerous black-and-white illustrations indicate, there was plenty of cause for anger on the part of oppressed peasants, ill-fed and ill-housed slum-dwellers, and civilians beset by pillaging soldiers...

...ALFRED WERNER is the art critic and historian...

...Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that the reproduced paintings, drawings, and prints have had an impact on the viewers...

...In America, Nast's cartoons certainly broke up the corrupt Tweed Ring that was swindling New York City of millions of dollars...

...Perhaps he is saying," Shikes comments on the very puzzling, and disturbing work, "that all members of the Third Reich were devoured and became its victims, or perhaps he is making explicit comment on the concentration camp inmates...

...Shikes mentions two instances: "Hogarth's prints were instrumental in obtaining the passage of legislation that curbed the excessive and debilitating consumption of gin and the mistreatment of animals...

...It is amazing how many world-famous artists have demonstrated their interest in the common welfare: Holbein, Cranach, Duerer, Goya, Daumier, Van Gogh, Orozco, Rivera, Grosz, and Shahn...

...But excellent work was also done by obscure persons like Auguste Raffet and Miklos Vadaz, or by D'Os-toya (no first name given) whose 1903 cartoon assailed police brutality in France...

...WILLIAM L. O'NEILL, an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, wrote "Everyone Was Brave: the Rise and Fall of Feminism in America" and edited "Echoes of Revolt...

...RONALD E. SAN-TON I is professor of philosophy at Denison University...

...Shikes omits Rembrandt with the explanation that while the artist's reactions "implicitly embrace the failures of men of all ages," there is no direct indictment of "the specific failure of Holland's social organization...

...Thus, a large number of men and women in their thirties and early forties are not included, among them most of the participants in the "Protest and Hope" group show, staged at the Art Center of the New School of Social Research in New York, and those who took part in the more recent show "Human Concern/Personal Torment" at the Whitney Museum...

...Furthermore, the implication is that indignant protests are made only by men of the Left...

...By the same token, it is disheartening to think how many great names are missing simply because so many famous masters were confined to pleasing their rich patrons...

...Still, some of Rembrandt's renditions of wretched beggars and miserable Jewish refugees from Eastern European pogroms could have been shown...

...JOHN GLIEDMAN is a graduate student in psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

...The industrial revolution added a new class of discontented: the exploited proletariat...

...Were it not so, totalitarian governments would not have been so eager to suppress all artists holding and expressing independent opinions...

...Why is there not even a reference to them...

...WILLIAM McCANN reports regularly in these pages on quality paperbacks...

...In most cases, however, the effect a specific picture, or series of pictures, has had on society cannot be clearly proven...

...Listening to these artists, one would think that not only the term, but also the very phenomenon—art as a political weapon—had just been invented...

...horrors of Stalinism—among them the celebrated British satirist, David Low...

...In our century, rabid nationalism and cynical Fascism made life miserable for many...

...In either case, all are consumed by a predatory, unseeing, cruel-mouthed monster...

...Surely there must have been "indignant eyes" among the artists of Persia, India, China, Japan, and other countries outside Europe and the Americas...

...He is writing a mystery novel involving a scientist...

...Does art of this kind, intended as it is to arouse anger and thereby contribute to social change, really achieve any measurable results...

...All of this is well and diligently researched by Shikes...

...But there are certain omissions...

...Many of the men represented in the book were persecuted by the dictators, sent to jail, or forced to emigrate...

...No attempt was made to include those who, in biting cartoons, have expressed their aversion to the THE REVIEWERS ARNOLD S. KAUFMAN teaches philosophy at the University of California at Los Angeles and is the author of "The Radical Liberal...

...The United States is well represented by more than forty artists...

...Among the modern artists represented in the book there are many card-carrying members of the Communist Party, such as Picasso, the Italian Renato Guttuso, and the Mexican David Alfaro Siqueiros, plus others who may not be Party members but who have always been associated with the Left...

...Yet the youngest in this survey, John Big-gers, a Negro, was born in 1924...

...Art as social protest did not, however, emerge in full strength before the Fifteenth Century, when Gutenberg's invention allowed the wide dissemination of revolutionary tracts, and engravings and woodcuts introduced a means of distributing pictures in, multiple reproductions to reach the masses...

...Undoubtedly, there was a lot wrong with Sixteenth Century Venice, but Titian was concerned only with getting profitable assignments to paint the likenesses of kings and potentates, and to decorate the great churches...

...Chronologically, the selection of pictures ranges from Master E. S.—a Fifteenth Century engraver about whom we know nothing beyond his initials— to another German, Walter Tafelmeir, who is still in his thirties, and whose etching, Third Reich, calls our attention to a considerable talent...