Revolutionary Tides: Poster Art

Revolutionary Tides: The Art of the Political Poster, 1914–1989, is an exhibit of historic poster art presented by the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. Reading from the exhibit’s press release: "Posters, a distinctly modern medium of mass communication and persuasion, served as a laboratory for the development of graphic conventions for depicting the masses as political actors. The emergence of a politics founded upon principles of popular sovereignty shaped new images of the masses as a collective force. At the same time, the new art practice of the popular poster shaped the emerging politics and cast artists in the role of mass communicators." The exhibition is part of a Stanford research project on the nature of crowds - principally revolutionary crowds, and the impact they have on social order. The project also includes a website called Crowds (requires Flash plug-in), but that undertaking strikes me as an apolitical stab at addressing an intensely political subject. That being said, the collection of poster art in the Stanford exhibit could hardly be more impressive.

Of particular note are the ultramodern graphic works of Soviet Constructivist artists like Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina. Their radical aesthetics outlived the Soviet state but still make an impact today. Ironically it’s capitalist advertising and marketing departments that have embraced Constructivist visual language and not today’s activist community. Another heavyweight featured in the show is John Heartfield, the man who invented photomontage as an artistic weapon and used it to attack the fascists who ruled his native Germany in the 1930’s. Also included in the show are posters from New Deal America; the early years of Iran’s Islamic Republic; graphics from America’s 1960’s protest movements; Norman Rockwell’s famous poster extolling freedom of speech and Andy Warhol’s celebrated silkscreen portraits of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. A central part of the exhibit is in fact comprised of rare posters from China’s Cultural Revolution period. Mostly created during the 1960’s, these posters are almost impossible to find - even in contemporary China itself.

Revolutionary Tides opens at the Cantor Arts Center on September 14th, 2005, and runs until January 1st, 2006. The show will travel to The Wolfsonian-Florida International University in Miami Beach, where it will be on exhibit from February 24th to June 25th, 2006. For more information visit the Cantor Arts Center website.

If you are unable to attend the Stanford exhibition, you might want to visit two online archives that present simular posters. Stefan Landsberger’s Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages is a remarkable collection of over 1,700 posters from China, beginning with the 1949 revolution and moving right up to the present. Russia’s Plakaty Museum of Posters currently has 1,962 Soviet and Russian posters in its growing collection. The posters document everything, including pre-revolutionary Russia, the 1917 revolution, and the late days of the Soviet Union.