Paper short abstract:

This paper calls for visiting works of great artists not merely for aesthetic pleasure, rather for conceptual inspiration in social science.

Paper long abstract:

This paper particularly discusses Paul Klee's 'Revolution of the Viaduct', which was his reaction to the opening of Nazis' 'Degenerate Art' in Munich (1937) that defamed modern art. I will gaze at this masterpiece throughout my investigation into the idea of crowds and protests. Interestingly, while some of the classic crowd theories, e.g. Le Bon's, and even late twentieth century theories such as Tilly's WUNC (2006), would be found not effective enough to articulate the recent crowd behaviour (Masoudi Nejad 2013), the Modernist artist Paul Klee (1879-1940) and his protest depiction remains very relevant today. This should encourage academics to revisit the question of crowd from a different perspective and avoid an overly restricted disciplinary approach. Paul Klee taught at the Bauhaus and is known as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. 'Revolution of the Viaduct' (1937) rejects the Third Reich propaganda that promoted a uniform mass society in which individuality had no place. In reaction, Klee depicted viaduct arcs that can be simultaneously conceived as humans. Heavy masonry viaduct arcs are supposed to be settled and bounded to each other, serving and functioning as a part of a solid system. However, Klee's arcs are like people who have rediscovered their individuality, challenging the Third Reich totalitarian social propaganda. Moreover, the crowd is not characterized by the lack of individuality, as suggested by conventional crowd theories; rather Klee depicted a leaderless crowd of diverse individuals, that well describes the recent protests in the twenty-first century.