Justice, from the portfolio The Capriccios

One Book One Northwestern, 2020–21

This artwork was selected in response to themes in Northwestern’s community-wide reading of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014) by Bryan Stevenson.

William Gropper’s Justice is part of a fifty-plate portfolio created after the artist appeared before the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953. One of two artists blacklisted by the government and accused of Communist sympathies, Gropper suffered economic, personal, and artistic repercussions as a result of the censure. His ambitious series is an homage to Francisco de Goya’s late 18th-century etching suite, Los Caprichos, which famously addressed the folly and irrationality of contemporary society.

Justice, in particular, directly attacks the belief that the judicial system is fair and that justice is blind. In the lower center of the nightmarish scene, Gropper shows the accused, likely innocent, standing small and helpless. The swift and unreasoning figure of Justice swoops in from the upper right as law enforcement holds the accused aggressively. Gropper emphasized the disorientation of space and figural relationships to evoke the surreal and senseless nature of the sentencing. These are themes that are at the center of many stories presented in Just Mercy, a text that opens our eyes to how unfair, biased, and irrational the court system can be.