A Farewell to the Western World

The artist Ai Weiwei similarly provokes symbols of power inherent to governing structures. From 1995 to 2003, Weiwei photographed himself gesturing his middle finger towards buildings defined by their political influence, including the Basilica San Marco in Venice, the Reichstag in Berlin, the Red Square in Moscow, and Tiananmen Square in Beijing. In Study of Perspective (White House) (1994-1999), made during the Clinton Administration, Weiwei photographed his finger from a far vantage point, illustrating the diminished scale of the presidential building from across the great lawn.

Painted decades earlier, Philip Guston's Courtyard (1969) centers two of his iconic hooded figures facing off under a clock in a space defined only by a brick wall. Paired down to its simplest elements, Guston's narratives have been heralded for forefronting concerns of the Civil Rights Movement. His most celebrated compositions are founded in a politicized and historic return to figuration after a period of abstraction during the 1960s, recalling his earlier work producing murals for the Works Progress Administration, an agency created under President Roosevelt's New Deal. At a time of massive internal upheaval in the United States while under the shadow of the Vietnam War, Guston's work suggested that to combat inequality, its perpetrators had to be clearly identified.

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