An exceptionally fine showing at Exit Art Center in New York City provides a first-hand look at hundreds of political graphic posters made since the 1960s. The posters, including many that are women-centric, offer brash insights into the array of hard-hitting art that human rights movements worldwide have created.
Called "SIGNS OF CHANGE: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to NOW," the curators deserve special mention. Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee have collected the creative work of dozens of international social movements. The exhibits include not only posters, but videos, handouts, songs, tee shirts and graphic texts. Many are iconic symbols, like the Silence=Death triangle that was ubiquitous in AIDS protests.
From the "women's canon" are key original graphics from Chicago Women's Liberation Union (see sample above), as well as from the New York-based Madame Binh Graphics Collective. A 36-page booklet, "Revolution as An Eternal Dream" by Mary Patton, gives a boldly honest and vivid accounting of the work, lives, passions and aftermaths of this group. She describes the solidarity of working in a collective where the individual artists were not seeking personal attention but trying to support political change and an "opposition" movement. "For us, art had always been an instrument for social change," she writes.
The art is sharp and fresh; the ideas stand the test of time ... some are so far ahead that they would seem triply radical today. "We will defend our ability to choose" pictures a woman pointing an assault weapon at the viewer, and says "Keep Your Hands Off My Body." Another poster, "More Than A Choice: Women Talk About Abortion" has multicultural images of women with and without children -- so contemporary that, except for its somewhat record jacket lettering, it could be reissued with little notice.
On an archival video, circa 1970s, playing in the gallery, an interviewer asked women and men why they had joined a march for women's rights, and they describe equal wages, abortion, sexism. A poster nearby shows the Statue of Liberty with a broom: "The women of the world are serving notice! We want wages for every dirty toilet -every indecent assault -every painful childbirth ... and if we don't get what we want we will simply refuse to work any longer!"
One that rocks mainstream sensibility today has a picture of a fetus, with text pasted all around: "Have a fetus cook for you." "Cry on a fetal shoulder." "Have a fetus affair," and other commentary that gets even more wild. An image from a cartoon book shows marching babies in bonnets with a flag that says GAGA and text below that says "Girls Against Gender Assignment." Even the poster pictured on this blog could fall in line with Rikki Lake's recent movie about home birth. It says: "Have your baby safely at home."
The selections touch a multitude of progressive issues -- land rights, disarmament, labor, Black Liberation, Native rights, apartheid, gay and lesbian rights -- and are collected from all parts of the world. Two critical sponsors are The Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles and the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Other source material comes from the American Friends' Service Committee, Boston Women's Video Collective, Freedom Archives, Hoover Institution Archives, Benton Gallery at the University of Connecticut, Bread and Puppet Theatre, image-shift berlin, Political Art Documentation/Distribution Archives at the Museum of Modern Art, and dozens of individual and organizational collectors.
Exit Art Gallery in Manhattan is at 475 Tenth Avenue, corner of 36th St. This show continues until December 6, 2008 at Exit and moves to the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh from January 23-March 8, 2009. We can only hope that other galleries across the country will grab onto this collection, and let's hope a book emerges, as well.
Posted by Cindy Cooper
Pictured above: Poster from Chicago Women's Liberation Union
Posts
