Posters of the Week

For All These Rights We've Just Begun to Fight
Ben Shahn
CIO Political Action Committee
Lithograph. 1946
New York, NY

Ben Shahn (1898 –1969) was a Lithuanian-born American artist, whose paintings, graphics and posters cry out for social justice. His work covered some of the most controversial issues of the day. In 1932 he completed a series on the still controversial trials of Sacco and Vanzetti, Italian immigrant labor organizers and anarchists who were executed in 1927. During World War II he worked for the U.S. Government Office of War Information (OWI) designing propaganda posters. Because his work lacked the preferred patriotism of the day only two of his posters were published. But both were memorable, especially a 1942 poster about Nazi extermination of the entire Czech village of Lidice. After the war, his work ranged from opposing nuclear weapons to supporting civil rights.

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week was done shortly after WWII. The enemy was no longer the Nazis, but attacks on working people and unions by the reactionary right in the U.S. Just like now. We dedicate the Poster-of-the-Week to the public employees and their supporters in Wisconsin who are fighting back, in some of the most creative and spirited ways we’ve seen in years. One protester even credited the Egyptians for inspiring the actions in the U.S. And the Wisconsin actions have in turn inspired actions in Ohio, Indiana, and support demonstrations around the country.

If you have posters about this or other issues, please send them to us.

Posted by Bruce Benidt on February 22, 2011 on http://thesamerowdycrowd.wordpress.com/

Poster of the Week

Walk Like an Egyptian
Mr. Fish
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/?tn
Reprinted by permission of Truthdig
2011

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week celebrates the courage, determination and optimism of the Egyptian people as they continue to fight against the 30 year long dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have gathered in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Mansoura, Sharqiya and elsewhere, in an unprecedented display of popular protest. After days of primarily peaceful…and hopeful…protest, the Mubarek regime’s secret police began attacking the demonstrators this week.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, can’t decide whether to continue supporting a long-time ally, although brutal and corrupt, or support the secular democracy movement. Egypt is the second largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world—only Israel receives more—and the bullets, tear gas and other weapons being used against the Egyptian people were made in the U.S.A.

Walk Like an Egyptian by Mr. Fish, gives the revolutionary Che Guevara an Egyptian focus by giving Alberto Korda’s icon photo of Che the face of Pharoah Tutankhamun— popularly known as “King Tut.” Mr. Fish is the pen name for Dwayne Booth, whose brilliant editorial cartoons appear in Truthdig.org., LA Weekly, MSNBC, and Harper’s Magazine.

For those of you who haven’t been glued to Aljazeera English, the events in Egypt were inspired by the overthrow last month of Tunisia’s President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali following 23 years of iron-fisted rule. Virtually unprecedented in modern Arab history, the populist uprising sent an ominous message to authoritarian governments that dominate the region. His ouster continues to inspire the pro-democracy demonstrations that are spreading across the Middle East. In addition to Egypt, popular revolts and demonstrations are also taking place in Algeria, Jordan, Syria, and Yemen.

A photo from Aljazeera showing “Walk Like an Egyptian” -- on the streets of Cairo!

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/06/live-blog-feb-7-egypt-protests

Sources:
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/egypts_effects_go_beyond_its_borders_20110202/?ln
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/28/uprising_in_egypt_this_is_the
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/15/tunisia-uprising-drives-i_n_809459.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/
http://www.rttnews.com/Content/PoliticalNews.aspx?Id=1537321&SM=1

Poster of the Week

Stop Anti-Gay/Lesbian Violence
National Gay Task Force
Offset, 1980s
New York, NY

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week honors the life of David Kato Kisule, Ugandan LGBTQ activist who was brutally murdered with an axe in his home on January 26, 2011. He was 42 years old. Kato was murdered shortly after winning a lawsuit against a magazine which had published his name and photograph identifying him as gay and calling for him to be executed.

Kato was among the 100 people whose names and photographs were published in October 2009 by the Ugandan tabloid newspaper Rolling Stone (no connection to U.S. magazine with the same name) in an article which called for their execution as homosexuals.

Considered a father of Uganda's gay rights movement, Kato served as advocacy officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). Kato and two other SMUG members who were also listed in the article, sued the newspaper to force it to stop publishing the names and pictures of people it believed were gay or lesbian. The petition was granted on November 2, 2010, effectively ruling for the end of Rolling Stone. On January 3, 2011, the court ordered the newspaper to pay Kato and the other two plaintiffs 1.5 million Ugandan shillings each. Three weeks later he was murdered.

Family, friends and co-activists attended Kato's open-air funeral, many of whom wore t-shirts bearing his photo in front, the Latin la(sic) luta continua [the struggle continues] in the back, and the rainbow flag colors inscribed onto the sleeves. When the Christian minister at the funeral preached against the gays and lesbians present, exclaiming comparisons to Sodom and Gomorrah, the activists ran to the pulpit and grabbed the microphone from him. An unidentified female activist angrily exclaimed "Who are you to judge others?" When villagers sided with the preacher and refused to bury Kato he was buried by his friends and co-workers, most of whom were gay.

His murder has been condemned by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, President Barack Obama, the European Union and many others. "I am deeply saddened to learn of the murder," Obama said. "David showed tremendous courage in speaking out against hate. He was a powerful advocate for fairness and freedom."

For his newspaper's alleged role in the murder, Rolling Stone editor Giles Muhame stated "When we called for hanging of gay people, we meant ... after they have gone through the legal process ... I did not call for them to be killed in cold blood like he was." However, he stated that "I have no regrets about the story. We were just exposing people who were doing wrong."

The same hypocritical denial of responsibility has been heard from Sarah Palin, Fox News and the Tea Party after the shooting of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords and others. Inflammatory visuals and rhetoric—whether it is placing cross-hairs over Democratic districts and calling for “Don’t Retreat, Instead Reload!” or running a headline that states, “Hang them” next to photos of 100 men and women identified as gays and lesbians—have consequences we must work to prevent.



Jimmy Somerville, David Kato memorial demonstration, Trafalgar Square, London, January 28, 2011.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kato
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12299786
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/29/uganda-death-sentence-gay-sex

Poster of the Week

Day of Solidarity With the Congo
Alfredo Rostgaard
Organización de Solidaridad de los Pueblos de Africa, Asia y América Latina (OSPAAAL)
Offset, 1972
Havana, Cuba

Patrice Lumumba (1925–1961) was the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo after he helped win its independence from Belgium in June 1960. Lumumba’s pan-Africanism, and his political and economical vision for the Republic of the Congo, gained him many enemies in Belgium and the United States. The CIA, with the approval of President Eisenhower, ordered his assassination.

On 14 September, 1960, only ten weeks after he was elected Prime Minister, Lumumba's government was deposed in a CIA-sponsored coup led by Colonel Joseph Mobutu. On January 17, 1961—50 years ago this month—Lumumba was assassinated by a firing squad. Tens of thousands died in the subsequent civil war.

In 1965, with the help of the CIA, Mobutu seized power and ruled for over 30 years. In spite of his corruption and economic mismanagement, Mobutu had the political and military support of Western countries, which saw him as an ally against communism in Africa and amenable to corporate exploitation of Congolese resources. Mobuto was overthrown in a civil war (1997-1999) in which four million people died.

Poster of the Week Artist

Alfredo Rostgaard (1943 – 2004) was a Cuban graphic designer and artist, and one of the most prolific of the revolutionary designers that contributed to Cuba's massive output of posters during the mid 1960s to mid 1970s. Referencing Pop Art and psychedelic poster art, Rostgaard's work also includes figurative painting and Warhol-esq commercial graphics. He designed numerous posters for ICAIC (the Cuban film institute) and became art director of the Organization in Solidarity with Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAAL) from 1960 to 1975. He had numerous international exhibits and won several distinguished awards. He was a talented, witty, and prolific artist with a deep sense of social responsibility. Produced 12 years after Lumumba’s assassination, Rostgaard represented his pan-Africanism by rendering Lumumba’s face in the shape of Africa.

References:
Patrice Lumumba: 50 Years Later, Remembering the U.S.-Backed Assassination of Congo’s First Democratically Elected Leader, Democracy Now! (Jan. 21, 2011)
http://www.inshuti.org/madsen2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba
http://www.docspopuli.org/articles/Cuba/RostgaardObit.html

Poster of the Week

Museum Censorship
Artist Unknown
Source: Hyperallergic.com
2010

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week protests the recent art censorship in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), in Los Angeles.

CENSORSHIP IN LOS ANGELES—Deeming it potentially offensive, Jeffrey Deitch, MoCA’s new director, last month whitewashed a mural he commissioned by Blu, an internationally renowned Italian street artist. The mural was to be an important part of MoCA’s upcoming street art exhibition, Art in the Street. Blu’s powerful anti-war mural featured coffins draped in dollar bills. Admitting he had received no complaints, Deitch said he destroyed the mural as he thought it would offend veterans. What really offends the veterans we’ve spoken with is the war and the war-profiteering targeted in the mural.

CENSORSHIP IN WASHINGTON D.C.—The National Portrait Gallery’s critically acclaimed Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture is the first major museum exhibition to focus on gay-themed portraiture in American art—from the 19th century to the present—and to show how art reflects society's evolving and changing attitudes towards sexual difference. New York artist David Wojnarowicz made A Fire in My Belly in 1986-87, after being diagnosed with HIV. In the work, he addresses the suffering of an AIDS victim, mortality and his own Catholic upbringing. Wojnarowicz died of complications from AIDS in 1992 at the age of 37.

Over-reacting to complaints by Republican congressional leaders, Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Museum, removed a four minute excerpt of Wojnarowicz’s video which included an 11-second section showing ants crawling over a crucifix. The Catholic League and some conservative U.S. politicians led by House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (OH) and House Majority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (VA), called the work hate speech against Christians and threatened to cut the Smithsonian’s funding if they did not remove the video.

We applaud The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, one of the principal sponsors of Hide/Seek for saying they would not fund future Smithsonian projects unless the video is restored to the exhibition. We also applaud all the museums and websites now showing A Fire in My Belly.

Wayne Clough will speak at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles on January 20th at noon as part of Town Hall Los Angeles public issues series.

PLEASE JOIN US for a Funeral Procession for Freedom of Expression!

11 AM THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 2011
BILTMORE HOTEL
506 South Grand Avenue (Across from Pershing Square)
Los Angeles, CA 90071

PROTEST CENSORSHIP OF THE ARTS!

If you can’t be there, please write to your elected representatives to say that censorship of the arts is unacceptable, unpatriotic and un-American.

Art is supposed to be provocative. Art is supposed to educate, agitate and inspire public debate. The debate that results from censoring art focuses more on the act of censorship, than on the art itself. Why was it removed? What was it saying? Whose buttons did it push?



CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week was based on the Parental Advisory Label invented in 1990 by the Recording Industry Association of America—the label consists of four words: "Parental Advisory/Explicit Content." The label was the result of pressure from The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) a committee formed in 1985 with the goal of increasing parental control over the access of children to music deemed to be violent or sexually suggestive. The committee was founded by four women, including Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore and Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker. To some, it has become known as the "Tipper sticker" because of Tipper Gore’s visible role in the PMRC.

Some retailers (such as Wal-Mart) refuse to sell albums containing the label, and many others limit the sale of such albums to adults only, although most stores have settled on an age limit of 17 in order to buy an album containing the label.

For more information:
http://laraw-art.blogspot.com/
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/01/smithsonian-secretary-clough-embroiled-in-video-censorship-controversy-to-speak-in-la-jan-20.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/13/AR2010121305853.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_Advisory

Smithsonian chief, embroiled in video censorship controversy, to speak in L.A. Jan. 20

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/01/smithsonian-secretary-clough-embroiled-in-video-censorship-controversy-to-speak-in-la-jan-20.html

LA Artists Protest MoCA Censorship

On Monday, January 3, 2011, there was a creative street artist action protesting the recent destruction of a mural at MoCA by director Jeffrey Deitch. Here are links to articles and videos.

http://www.vimeo.com/18419889

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/01/street-artists-protest-moca-geffen-contemporary-blu.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/04/protest-at-moca-over-blus_n_804265.html#s219002

http://www.justseeds.org/blog/2011/01/street_art_blus_1.html