Where Are We Now?

Amid the smoldering ruins of a nuclear explosion, disoriented figures roam the shattered landscape. A triumphal arch splinters while an uprooted tree in the foreground reveals a sinister face lurking in the depths. A man struggles in twisted wreckage, and starving children cry piteously in this grotesque and frightening world. Painting four years after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities, Michael Lenson imagined the aftermath of a nuclear war. Lenson adopted irrational, surrealist elements to a realist style in order to protest against the ongoing nuclear proliferation of the Cold War.