Poster of the Week

!No Olvidemos! A Julius y Ethel Rosenberg

Angel Bracho

Taller de Gráfica Popular

linocut, Mexico, 1953

In 1999, to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Board member Susan Martin and Executive Director Carol Wells invited 100 individuals to select their favorite poster from our collection and write a paragraph about why they chose it. The resulting exhibition was titled, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised after the brilliant 1970 Gil Scott Heron song, and exhibited at Track 16 Gallery, Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. The guest curators were artists, activists, curators and writers. They included Ed Asner, Barbara Carrasco, John Baldessari, Maria Elena Durazo, Susan Faludi, Leon Golub, Tom Hayden, Christopher Knight, Barbara Kruger, Victor Navasky, Holly Near, Nancy Spero, Kent Wong, Alfre Woodard and 86 others. More than a decade later, the list remains impressive and the selected posters still relevant, so CSPG’s Poster of the Week will occasionally feature one of these posters and the guest curator’s statement.   

The current Poster of the Week was selected in 1999 by Paul Schimmel, the innovative and internationally respected head curator of MoCA for 22 years, who was recently, suddenly and unceremoniously fired. Tom Patchett, founder of Track 16 Gallery and Smart Art Press, selected the same poster. Track 16 opened in 1994, and premiered many important exhibitions, including several by CSPG.  Track 16 will soon be demolished to make way for a planned Expo Line Metro stop. They both picked a stunning linocut produced in Mexico after the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953.   

The multi-style carving of the woodblock shows Julius and Ethel on different planes. In this divergent graphic treatment, Ethel is a classic "Madonna" — innocent, loving and kind. Contrasting her larger, softer image, the artist has portrayed Julius quite differently: if there was a crime committed, he’s the one that did it. The irony is that today, where it concerns our preferred trading partner — China — the government ignores the spying.

Paul Schimmel

 Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art

I chose this poster because Paul Schimmel chose this poster.

Tom Patchett, Track 16 Gallery/Smart Art Press

The Rosenbergs were accused of passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.  The case against them was created in an atmosphere of anti-Communism and anti-Semitism. Their accusers included FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Senators Joe McCarthy and Pat McCarran. Although they were never found guilty of any act of espionage, they were convicted and executed for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. Presiding Judge Irving S. Kaufman accused them of having "put the atom bomb into the hands of the Russians," that they had caused the Korean War, and that they had "changed the course of history to the disadvan­tage of our country." This was the first execution of civilians for espionage in United States history.

The decision to execute the Rosenbergs was, and still is, controversial. The New York Times, in an editorial on the 50th anniversary of the execution (June 19, 2003) wrote, "The Rosenberg case still haunts American history, reminding us of the injustice that can be done when a nation gets caught up in hysteria."

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg

 "Remembering the Rosenbergs". The New York Times. June 19, 2003.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/29/entertainment/la-et-schimmel-notebook-20120630

http://hyperallergic.com/49394/occupy-track-16-art-disappears-so-might-track-16-gallery/

http://www.gilscottheron.com/lyrevol.html

Poster(s) of the Week

Primero de Mayo de 1947
[May Day 1947 Only a conscious, united, and honest labor movement can successfully defend the interests of the workers, and help Mexico prosper.]
Pablo O'Higgins; Alberto Beltrán; Taller de Gráfica Popular
Linocut, 1947
Mexico City, Mexico

The celebration of May Day as a labor holiday marked by parades and red flags began on May 1, 1886. Behind the campaign was the universal adoption of the 8-hour working day, an improvement on the recent fight for a ten-hour day. In Chicago, the center of the movement, workers had been agitating for an 8-hour day for months, and on the eve of May 1, 50,000 were already on strike. 30,000 more swelled their ranks the next day, bringing most of Chicago manufacturing to a standstill. In a notorious riot that followed (the Haymarket massacre) the 8-hour movement failed, but the Chicago events figured prominently in the founding congress of the Second International (Paris, 1889) to make May 1, 1890 a demonstration of the solidarity and power of the international working class movement. Ever since, May Day has been celebrated globally as the international workers’ holiday.

May Day 2006
Ami Motevelli
Self-Help Graphics and Art
Silkscreen, 2006
Los Angeles, California

On December 16, 2005, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act by a vote of 239 to 182—92% of Republicans supporting, 82% of Democrats opposing. This bill would not only have made it harder for legal immigrants to become U.S. citizens, but have made it a felony for anyone—including clergy, teachers or healthcare workers, to assist the undocumented in any way. It also called for the construction of a wall across up to 400 miles of the US-Mexico border.

The passage of HR 4437 was the catalyst for some of the largest protest demonstrations in US history, including the March 25, 2006 demonstration in Los Angeles where more than 1 million people took to the streets, and the May 1, 2006 “A Day Without Immigrants” when millions protested in cities across the country, including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. There were school walkouts, street demonstrations, and a one-day boycott of all businesses to demonstrate the buying power of immigrants. The above poster was produced for the Los Angeles march. Following the unprecedented street demonstrations, the Senate passed a much more moderate bill, S. 2611.

In April 2010, the most repressive anti-immigrant legislation in the country was passed in Arizona. Boycotts of the state have started. On May 1, 2010, an immigrant rights march will be held in Washington, D.C.