Das Tausendjährige Reich

Das Tausendjährige Reich , German for “The Thousand-Year Empire,” was a chauvinistic Nazi term for the Third Reich—which collapsed after 12 years. Chagoya paints the text in Fraktur , the preferred font of the early Nazi regime. In a sea of blood, under a dark sky, Chagoya depicts corpses, cars, houses, missiles, televisions, monsters, and Mickey Mouse’s disembodied hands. The artist often brings together references to Mexican art, American pop culture, and the long-term effects of colonization in unsettling ways. Given the nod to Disney, this painting hints at potential echoes of the German past in postwar U.S. culture.