Artistic Differences

Shia LaBeouf's "He Will Not Divide Us" posited that Americans just needed to come together and recognize the ultimate superficiality of their political differences in order to discover unity. Instead, it took mere days for the piece to become a petri dish of division, growing into both a target for Trump's most trollish supporters and an object of devotion for his most unmoored opponents.

In the course of its slow and spectacular implosion, "He Will Not Divide Us" inadvertently became a much more interesting piece of art—precisely by demonstrating the limits of empty calls for unity.