Analysis Of Julius Block's Agitprop !

Ernst Luly
ART 1012 FMWA
Agitprop! Assignment

LABEL TEXT:
Julius Block (American, born Germany, 1888-1966)
The Lynching, 1932
Oil on Canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

According to the Brooklyn Museum’s website, Agitprop! is a combination of the terms agitate and propaganda. Based on my own observations, I was able to deduce the overall theme of Agitprop! as art that was used as a means of protest against various social and cultural issues. A wide range of issues is addressed, taken from several periods of history and areas of the world. The pieces within the exhibition, which are taken from artists from various backgrounds, focus on the oppression of minorities and their rights and treatment in society. These include
Right in the middle of the painting is an African American man being lynched by an all-white mob. By placing the black man in the middle of the painting and elevating him above everyone else, Block is making sure that he’s the first thing that my eyes are drawn to. When I look at the black man’s face, I see him looking up to the sky with grief and pain on his face. The white mob that is lynching him are looking up to him, with blank expressions on their face. Their expressions confuse me as I can allocate no real emotion on their faces. The way I assess this is that the mob is completely apathetic to the black man’s life. To them, his life isn’t worth much and his death will be insignificant. The black man is also stripped naked, which was most likely done in an attempt to humiliate and dehumanize him. The colors used in “The Lynching” are dark and dull, enhancing the seriousness of the piece. Looking at the sky, I see no sunshine, and instead of the bright blue we’re usually used to seeing, it is instead replaced with a depressing and bleak gray sky. Even the clouds, which are usually white and fluffy, are painted very blocky and crudely, containing shades of gray within them as well. The trees behind the lynching are lifeless, looking more like dark shadows than actual fauna. Directly around the black man and the mob, there is a shade of red that could symbolize the bloodshed and hatred that is
The exhibition was sponsored by the NAACP and featured pieces from thirty-eight artists, with only eight being African American. The goal of this exhibition was to “enlist influential upper-class audiences to support anti-lynching legislation that had been introduced to Congress the year before”. One interesting aspect of “The Lynching” is the underlying religious references placed by Block in the piece. Almost immediately, I was able to identify the comparison between the black man being lynched and Jesus Christ being crucified. The main indicator of this comparison is the black man’s positioning on the tree. The most common form of lynching at that time was to hang the victim, and instead of being hung from a noose, the black man is laid out on the tree with his body being positioned similarly to Jesus’s body on the cross. The black man is also stripped naked, much like how Jesus Christ was by the Romans. When looking at this comparison, I can also tell that Block is implementing a sense of irony into his painting. The irony is that Christianity was used as a tool to oppress African Americans. These slaves were stripped of their African heritage and customs, with slaves being taught that if accepted their miserable lives on