originally these few paragraphs were going to take inspiration from the last post and attempt to distinguish between propaganda or campaign art and activist art / but having reviewed the last post i am not convinced of this being the best approach to exploring art of activism – so instead i intend to write less about the distinction between the two categories and more about the relationship between the two
the shift in my focus arises partly out of a prompt by Katriona Beales (www.katrionabeales.com – for some thought provoking cross-discipline works / my particular favourite being ‘Rallying the Troops’) to suggest a favourite artist/activist / got me thinking about the most impactful pieces of ‘art’ / a question to which i feel there is no real response – so this is an attempt to identify and discuss some extremely influential works (or rather collections of works)/
the first to discuss are the posters of the spanish civil war / what is it about these works that makes them activist art / their subject matter to be sure is of a highly politicized nature / however – in a post-modernist age – the inclusion of overt political messaging in a piece of art would exclude it from such classification / and contemporarily they were probably not considered as works of art /
i choose this one as emblematic of so many others / the raised fist epitomising the struggle and resistance / i also choose it because of its appeal to a particular group – the youth / calling on them to unite for spain
i include them less because of their individual powerful imagery and vibrance – and more because of the creation of a common iconography [a bit toulouselautrecmeetscubism / coarse shadowing of figures highlighted against colour blocks of red and black – or whatever the colour of the group putting up the poster was / oversized capital letters shouting the message at passersby / leitmotifs of the fist and broken swastika] used for a variety of means and the method of their deployment and the help they gave to creating an activist environment /
to my mind they are works of activist art because they are a visual medium that convey an ideological message and although they are examples of visual art – they also interacted with the audience in a way that posters rarely do / there are stories of groups of people essentially flashmobbing burnt-down buildings and plastering them with these posters / either to blame an oppositional group for burning down the building – or to explain the rationale for the attack on the building / one effect of these posters and the collective efforts to put them up was the creation of a highly politicised environment – disseminating the visual responses – reactions – and messages of a collective /
this poster is one of my favourites – largely because my partner brought a copy of it back for me from a trip to spain – but also because it publicises the link between the CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo) and the FAI (Federación Anarquista Ibérica) – the latter the militarist wing of the anarcho-syndicalist former / but also because the image’s protagonists are women (the Mujeres Libres) / it is an image that encapsulates the energy, collaboration and underlying values behind the resistance movement in 1930s spain
the posters built an environment that spoke visually to the population about events and issues that were part of their everyday life / and the politicised feelings that these posters incited – coupled with the participatory efforts to put them up – in my opinion are what render this kind of political propagandist art a kind of activist art
an example of how posters using the iconography common to political posters were used to convey simple messages to the population and were probably relied upon by the population for information / this one recommends that families evacuate madrid as a way of helping the war effort
there are hundreds of articles on these posters and their role in the spanish civil war – of which i have read only a couple and so cannot claim expertise / but they do serve as a spectacular collection of visual documentation on the circumstances during the civil war: “on almost every building there are party posters: posters against Fascism, posters about the defense of Madrid, posters appealing for recruits to the militia…and even posters for the emancipation of women and against venereal disease.” [Christopher Caudwell, December 1936 – taken from http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/visfront/intro.html]
a poster on preventing STDs – which are as dangerous as ‘las balas enemigas’ [enemy bullets] / using iconography made popular by the political posters – this poster appeals to the passersby – who have grown accustomed to looking at the posters for updates regarding the circumstances in their locality – using the recognisable imagery – but with a more different message / i would be interested to learn more about the choice to use a soldier as the male figure / it would seem to me to imply a fairly misogynist view that the female temptress [presumably identifiable by the red top and unnaturally blonde hair] is the culprit and the unsuspecting male soldier the victim who will no longer be able to fight for his cause / but this is based purely on supposition
this post was originally going to include a discussion of soviet posters, shepard fairey and barbara kruger too but as over 700 words in an internet publication is overkill it can wait for a future writing /
this discussion of the spanish civil war posters is necessarily all too brief and equal amounts of text and more could be included on their aesthetic qualities and specific messaging / i choose instead to demonstrate how as a body of art – [their iconography – messaging – distribution – confrontation of audience – etc…] – they stand as an example of activist art – not attributable to a single artist / rather a demonstration of collective expression