Force of Wall: The Crimes of Justice in Law and Art

Rafael Cauduro, the greatest muralist since Diego Rivera, died in December 2022. The Crimes of Justice,situated in the Supreme Court of Mexico, speaks to the old problem of the relationship between art, politics and the State. In Mexico City, the birthplace of modern muralism, Rafael Cauduro confronts its ambivalent legacy and offers up new solutions. And at the same time, at the very heart of the legal system, Cauduro presents a critique of law and justice almost unprecedented in its fierce and uncompromising determination to lay bare the brutality of contemporary legal phenomena. How do these two modes of representation, the visual and the legal, actually relateto one another? In this talk, Professor Desmond Manderson (Danse Macabre; Songs Without Music) explores the relationship between the force of law and the force of art through Cauduro’s masterpiece. Tears, ghosts and x-rays are all on the agenda.