All that happened had to happen

The title “All that happened had to happen” would seem to endorse the idea of the inevitability of the course of history and to suggest that man can do nothing to change the course of events, it also seems pessimistically reminiscent of the kind of statement the philosopher Hegel might have written.
And yet, following the same strategy I adopted in other paintings, the images depicted seem to express the opposite view, suggesting instead the existence of the unpredictable and the importance of human agency. There are, for example, scenes of protest in a Tehran square, where women dressed in traditional black robes confront Regime guards.

At the very top of the painting, there is a reproduction of a photo taken during the 1929 Depression depicting unemployed men waiting in line. In another image, you can see a group of people setting fire to portraits of Stalin during the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. In other parts of the painting there are images of labourers constructing buildings and others depicting large groups of people working together. In the central foreground, surrounded by other figures, President Obama is pictured meeting the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke.