1.Protest Art Do you feel most protest art is valuable, or is it a waste of time and energy? What are social issues that are protested today? What role should the artist play in today’s society? What are the most effective means of protesting? Relate your ideas to at least one work in the chapter.

2.The Effects of a So-So Government Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted Allegory of Good Government: The Effects of Good Government in the City and in the Country in 1338-1339 in response to the turmoil that was prevalent in Italian city-states. What lessons does it teach us today? Identify three aspects of good government that are not contained in the work. What would an allegory of good government look like today?

3.Truisms Jenny Holzer created Truisms, which are one sentence declarative statements concerning clichés, stereotypes, and contradictions. Here’s a sampling of the approximately two hundred statements:

• A man can’t know what it’s like to be a mother
• Absolute submission can be a form of freedom
• Automation is deadly
• Bad intentions can yield good results
• Being alone with yourself is increasingly unpopular
• Dreaming while awake is a frightening contradiction
• Enjoy yourself because you can’t change anything anyway
• Freedom is a luxury not a necessity
• Humanism is obsolete
• Illness is a state of mind
• It’s better to be naïve than jaded
• Just believing something can make it happen
• Money creates taste
• Morals are for little people
• Noise can be hostile
• Private property created crime
• You must disagree with authority figures
• You owe the world not the other way around

So what exactly is a truism? Does everyone agree on these statements? When are these statements not true? How can words be considered fine art?

4.Mr. and Mrs. Andrews Yinka Shonibare created Mr. and Mrs. Andrews without Their Heads based on the painting by Thomas Gainsborough. Shonibare imbues the work with layers of meaning, from the allusion of the beheading of the aristocracy during the French Revolution to the origin of the fabric in the woman’s dress. Compare the two works. What did Shonibare include in his parody and what did he leave out from the original work? Why did Shomibare copy another artist’s work instead of creating an original one?

5.The Spanish Civil War Siqueiros’ Echo of a Scream and Picasso’s Guernica were both done in 1937 in response to the atrocities in the Spanish Civil War. Compare the two works. Consider emotional response from both artists, keeping in mind that Siqueiros fought in the War and Picasso did not. Then compare to Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic, which was also a response to the war in Spain between the Fascists and the Republic. (An elegy is a poem or reflection of mourning.) How does Motherwell express his feeling about the Republic loss? How does that compare to the other, more representational (yet still abstract) works?

6.WAR- What Is It Good For? The first eight images of the text show images of war, from the Napoleonic Occupation in Spain and the Peasant War in Germany to wars of the twentieth century (WWII, Spanish Civil War, and Vietnam). Compare these following images: The Executions of May, 1808 by Goya, The Outbreak by Käthe Kollwitz, Fit for Active Service by George Grosz, Goering the Executioner by John Heartfield, Echo of a Scream by David Alfaro Siqueiros, Elegy to the Spanish Republic XXXIV by Robert Motherwell, Woman with Keloidal Scars by Tomatsu Shomei, and Mercenaries I by Leon Golub. What mood is evoked in each? What effect do the works that are in black and white have over the works that use color? What effect does abstraction have in setting the mood of war and despair? Which work best evokes the feeling of war?