I think artists have the ability to capture certain moments and to enhance reality to a point where it becomes shared reality. The artist doesn't function in a vacuum. He doesn't create the feeling that is in the air, but he has a way of catalyzing it and forcing one's attention to it. The air, as it were, is heavy-laden, charged with potential. Of course, it's an old story.
Every revolution needs a poster artist.
Radical humor magazines played a crucial role in European cultural and political life at that time. There was Punch in England, which had started in 1841, and the French humor sheets, such as Le Rire and Le Chat Noir , at the end of the nineteenth century. They, in turn, inspired the German Simplicissimus , which, though it began as an illustrated literary journal, had its greatest impact through the work of its artists and cartoonists. Simplicissimus attacked the Kaiser, the government, the clergy. In the early years, its artists were jailed, and the magazine was censored and banned.