Analyzing Siqueiros' Collective Suicide: Art & Politics | MoMA Educator

The 1930s began with hope for eternal peace but ended with the deadliest war in history. The Versailles System, intended to guarantee peace, instead created grievances and desires for revenge. Germany systematically violated its terms: achieving armaments equality in 1932, withdrawing from the League of Nations in 1933, reintroducing conscription in 1935, and sending troops into the Rhineland in 1936. Pan-Germanism and the concept of Lebensraum drove this expansion. Simultaneously, Japan seized Manchuria and invaded China, while Italy occupied Ethiopia. These parallel aggressions across continents created conditions for the Axis alliance, formed through the Berlin-Rome Axis (1936), Anti-Comintern Pact (1936), and Steel Pact (1939).

U.S. foreign policy in the 1930s was shaped by World War I's aftermath, the Great Depression, and a strong reluctance to start another war. The U.S. maintained isolationism due to its geographic position between two great oceans. The League of Nations was weakened and had virtually no power to stop aggressive nations like Japan, Italy, and Germany. The Kellogg-Briand Pact and Washington Naval Conference had reduced arms buildups, but militarism returned with the Depression. The U.S. did not recognize Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and the League of Nations lost Japan as a member. The U.S. also had a large war debt from World War I that European nations could not pay during the Depression.

The 1930s marked a fundamental divergence between revisionist powers (Bulgaria, Italy, Germany, Hungary) and status quo powers (Yugoslavia, Greece, France, Turkey). Revisionist powers sought to overturn the Versailles system through territorial revision, while status quo powers organized to maintain the existing order. The Balkan Pact (1934) exemplified this divide, creating a defensive alliance to contain Bulgarian expansion. Italy's invasion of Ethiopia (1935) tested international collective security, with Greece joining sanctions against Italy. This period established the geopolitical tensions that would lead to WWII.

In the mid-1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of the few Americans who understood that the policy of isolation and non-interference in overseas situations was obsolete. Despite the world smelling like gunpowder, America still considered overseas events as safely distant and vicious, believing that the only way to protect themselves from war was not to interfere in the old world's business. In 1935, fascist Italy led by Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. In 1936, General Franco unleashed a civil war against the communist government in Spain, with Germany and Italy supporting Franco while the Soviet Union supported the Communists. In 1937, Japan assaulted China. The central events of the 1930s revolved around Nazi Germany, which became the focus of threat to the world after Adolf Hitler came to power.

В 1930-е годы международная система, сформированная после Первой мировой войны (Версальско-Вашингтонская система), резко деградировала из-за экономического кризиса 1929 года, который усилил социальные противоречия и способствовал росту фашистских режимов. Германия под руководством Гитлера, выходя из Лиги наций, наращивала военную мощь, создавала антикоминтерновский блок и постепенно захватывала территории (Австрия, Чехословакия), пока западные державы, применяя политику умиротворения, не допустили вмешательства, что привело к началу Второй мировой войны в сентябре 1939 года.

When analyzing works of art in FRQs, students should use appropriate vocabulary: 'obra' (work), 'pintura' (painting), 'imagen' (image), 'fotografía' (photograph). Students should avoid using 'pictura' (an anglicism from English 'picture'). Key vocabulary for art analysis includes: 'primer plano' (foreground), 'trasfondo' (background), 'detalles' (details), 'colores' (colors), 'protagonista' (protagonist), 'expresión' (expression), and 'ambiente' (atmosphere).

Art is subjective yet follows underlying rules and guidelines that serve as building blocks for effective artwork. These principles function like plot structures in compelling stories. The five fundamental categories for art analysis are: Medium (tools and materials used, each with strengths and limitations), Composition (arrangement of elements, focal point, movement, balance), Line Work (contours and shapes), Value (lights, shadows, and tones), and Color (hue, value, saturation, temperature, harmony). Contrast creates drama and interest—artwork lacking contrast appears flat and bland. Strategic use of contrast distinguishes strong artwork. Understanding these fundamentals helps artists recognize what works in their own art and what changes to make for improvement.

Heinrich Wölfflin's 'Conceitos Fundamentais da História da Arte' presents five key concepts for analyzing art: (1) Linear vs. Painterly - linear art uses clear outlines while painterly art uses light and shadow; (2) Plane vs. Depth - classical art keeps figures on the same visual plane while Baroque art creates diagonal depth; (3) Closed vs. Open Form - classical figures are self-contained while Baroque elements depend on the whole composition; (4) Multiplicity vs. Unity - classical figures are independent while Baroque elements are interdependent; (5) Clarity vs. Obscurity - classical art shows all figures clearly while Baroque art may hide faces or create shadowed areas. These concepts help identify artistic periods and remain useful for art analysis today.

Art fundamentals function like a language vocabulary. You cannot create complex scenes or portraits without first mastering the basic building blocks. When you present your brain with a picture or photo you like, it cannot pull off anatomy, symmetry, form, and light combined if you lack this foundational vocabulary. There are not that many fundamentals to learn - form, light understanding, and anatomy are the core elements that happen simultaneously in portraiture.

This section introduces fundamental art vocabulary essential for analyzing artworks. Key terms include: Portrait (focuses on face/head/upper body with personal features), Landscape (natural scenery like mountains/trees, focusing on setting), Intense (strong emotion or powerful visual qualities), Admired (looking at something impressive with pleasure), Features (facial characteristics like nose/eyes/mouth), Contrast (visual difference between light/dark areas adding depth), Figure (human form/bodies depicted), and Composition (arrangement of elements affecting balance/focus/flow). These terms provide the foundation for understanding and discussing art critically.

Rákosi highlights two crucial aspects by which the avant-garde can be understood as an extension or radicalization of social realism. Like Marxism and social realism, the avant-garde should allow criticism of the status quo by all means. However, the critical operation does not lead to the denial of social reality, which was the failure of the traditional avant-garde. Instead, it contributes to possible social innovation. The role of the avant-garde is carrying out testing or experimentation with forms of social thinking, imaginary, and sensibility in order to create a more human consciousness. It is the only experimental way of the Marxist project in art.

Socialist realism replaced the revolutionary avant-garde movements as the official art style under Soviet rule. While the avant-garde movements were revolutionary and socialist in nature, socialist realism was essentially a return to traditional realism (which was bourgeois in essence) but with Soviet heroes. This shift was ironic because the avant-garde movements were actually revolutionary, while socialist realism was a conservative return to tradition.

The traditional opposition between realism and avant-garde fails because both are literary conventions. Realism is not actually realistic—Gertrude Stein's poems describe walking down New York streets more accurately than conventional realist prose. The meaningful distinction lies between art that places the authentic individual with unquestioned emotions as the measure of experience versus practices that recognize we are irremediably mediated, embedded in systems that precede and exceed us. Both approaches involve critical study—bringing things into relation with other things not to produce answers but to pursue thinking as pleasurable and necessary activity, particularly regarding relationships between technologies, power, and aesthetics.

Socialist Realism, which emerged in the 1930s, paradoxically restored the figure of the autonomous artist. While artists served the people rather than privileged classes, the relationship between socialist artists and the state/nation was structurally similar to previous societies. Professional artists produced quality realist works that satisfied the interests of the working class and peasantry, maintaining a division of labor that preserved artistic autonomy in a new form. Artists like Isaac Brodsky, who created works for the 2nd Congress of the Comintern, were non-partisan salon artists who loved beauty and could capture moments as forms regardless of content. There were diametrically opposed interpretations of Socialist Realism. The official Soviet view held that art should depict the future truth of communism, so depicting things as they are was considered lying. In contrast, Georg Lukács and Mikhail Lifshits advocated for 'true' Socialist Realism as reflection of reality's contradictions. Marx observed that art, as something lacking material interest in itself, faces threats in capitalist reality. The further development of capitalism inevitably leads to art's degradation and replacement by mass production and culture that loses its specific qualities. This idea of art's degradation as capitalism develops was crucial for early 20th-century art theories, which viewed the existing world as hostile to art and culture, moving toward self-destruction that could potentially be prevented by revolutionary action. The first avant-garde (1910s-1920s) was revolutionary in its approach to art and society. Artists like Tatlin envisioned objects as 'comrades' rather than masters over humans, and artists like Rodchenko saw the artist as a producer. This program of world reconstruction was based on creating a new human who would build their own culture and identity in a new society. The first avant-garde addressed the 'new man' who was yet to be created. The second avant-garde (1950s-1970s) differed fundamentally from the first. After the historical defeat of the first avant-garde's program of world reconstruction and the rise of totalitarian societies, the new avant-garde addressed not the 'new man' to be created but the existing society of mass consumption. Artists no longer sought to destroy and rebuild society from the ground up but aimed to improve it through critique and strategies of visible undermining. The key difference between the first and second avant-garde lies in the relationship to the viewer. The viewer is no longer understood as an object of propaganda but as a participant in dialogue with the artist. Neither the artist nor the viewer is considered neutral—the artist is not a genius solitary creator, and the viewer is expected to recognize their social and historical rootedness in specific groups of interests. On these new foundations, dialogue between artist and viewer emerged through what in the 1960s was called the 'open artwork.' This type of artwork includes installations, video works, performances, and other new genres that emerged from the recognition of the historical end of revolutionary ideas of the first avant-garde. Contemporary people are essentially descendants of the 'new man' who was never fully formed or realized. We live in the partially constructed but realized dream of modernism, where our conditions of life reflect this unfulfilled vision. Marx and Freud, along with Nietzsche, were critical thinkers of the 19th century who shared a fundamental distrust of consciousness and the Enlightenment concept of the autonomous individual. They revealed that what appears as freedom may actually be unconscious compulsion. For Marx, unconscious forces are the conflicts between labor and capital or between productive forces and relations of production. This discovery shocked the early 20th century and influenced various social phenomena.

Russian Avant-Garde and Socialist Realism are not opposing forces as commonly believed. Russian Avant-Garde flourished from the 1910s-1920s, while Socialist Realism emerged under Stalin in the 1930s. The conventional narrative holds that Socialist Realism suppressed Avant-Garde, but this overlooks deeper connections. Both movements share fundamental characteristics, particularly regarding the concept of 'the end of history.' For Socialist Realism, history had already ended with socialism's arrival, meaning it held no fixed position within historical development. This challenges the simplistic opposition between avant-garde art and totalitarianism.