Art in a State of Siege

What do artworks look like in extreme cases of collective experience? What signals do artists send when enemies are at the city walls and the rule of law breaks down, or when a tyrant suspends the law to attack from inside? Art in a State of Siege tells the story of three compelling images created in dangerous moments and the people who experienced them—from Philip II of Spain to Aby Warburg and Carl Schmitt—whose panicked gaze turned artworks into omens.

Acclaimed art historian Joseph Koerner reaches back to the eve of iconoclasm and religious warfare to explore the most elusive painting ever painted. In Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Delights, enemies are everywhere: Jews and Ottomans at the gates, witches and heretics, sins overtaking the mind. Following a paper trail leading from Bosch’s time to World War II, Koerner considers a monumental self-portrait by Max Beckmann. Created in 1927 when Germany was governed by emergency decree, this work brazenly claimed to decide Europe’s future—until the Nazis deemed it to be a threat to the German people. For South African artist William Kentridge, Beckmann’s paintings exemplified “art in a state of siege.” Koerner shows how they served as beacons during South Africa’s racialist apartheid rule and inspired Kentridge’s breakthrough animations of drawings being made, erased, and remade.

Spanning half a millennium but urgent today, Art in a State of Siege reveals how, in dire straits, art becomes the currency of last resort.