Mr. Henry Ford (2016)

The Industrial Anti-Semite

Henry Ford is celebrated as the father of modern consumer society. He not only invented the assembly line, but also, through high wages, the worker as a consumer. Yet behind the facade of the upstanding founder lurks one of the most influential anti-Semites of the 20th century. As publisher of the Dearborn Independent, he disseminated conspiracy theories that directly inspired Adolf Hitler. This portrait is a visual trap: The swastika is subtly woven into the physiognomy and the background—often only recognizable upon closer inspection, but then impossible to miss. The painting poses the question of the ethical basis of our prosperity:

“If the father of industrial production and prototype of a good founder was an anti-Semite, we should seriously question our economic system.”

Stylistically, the work moves between Cubism and the modernism that Ford’s admirers later branded as “degenerate.”