Daily Heller by Steven Heller

After complaints to the city's Buildings Department and concern from the Ukrainian community in New York City's East Village, Cooper Union removed a large banner from its façade showing Pablo Picasso's 1953 portrait of Josef Stalin (above). The work (below) was part of a solo installation by Lene Berg, a Norwegian artist, who included it as part of her exhibit, "Stalin by Picasso or Portrait of Woman with Mustache," featuring projects that reflects on the artistic and cultural works produced during the Cold War–era. "Berg's exhibition provokes discussion on the relationships between art and politics, in recent history and in the contemporary moment," states the press release.

According to Ms. Berg, who lives in Berlin, the removal occurred without her knowledge or any warning. Community leaders complained that this year was the 75th anniversary of a famine imposed by Stalin that killed millions of Ukrainians. Ironically, when this portrait was drawn, it was frowned upon by the Communists as being an unsympathetic depiction of the Russian dictator, which prompted this response from Picasso:

"Can you imagine if I had done the real Stalin, such as he has become, with his wrinkles, his pockets under the eyes, his warts. A portrait in the style of Cranach! Can you hear them scream? 'He has disfigured Stalin! He has aged Stalin!'"

On November 14, the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a press release with a letter to the Bloomberg administration asking them to explain the removal of the banners from Cooper Union's façade (click here). And for more information read here and here (photo below by Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times).

Politics | Propaganda | Signage

11/19/2008 7:27:13 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00) Comments [1]

Monday, November 10, 2008

Who Designed the Obama O?
Posted by Steve

Who designed the Obama O? John Maas on bnet.com has the answer:

The Obama logo was created early in 2007, through a collaboration between Chicago firms Sender LLC and MO/DE. Chief Obama strategist David Axelrod gave the agencies a mandate: design a logo that would evoke "a new sense of hope," as he told the Chicago Business Journal. After working feverishly, the design was introduced on February 10, 2007.

Sol Sender discusses the "brand development" of the most memorable political logo in the past 50 years here. And MO/DE addresses its contributions to the campaign here with a video here. Bravo to both creators for breaking the conventional mold.

Speaking of molds, Hilary Ross and Jim Lennox of Shickshinny, Pa., painted the Obama Hope poster (100 by 70 foot) on their rural field (below). "When we were on the ground applying the colors, we couldn't tell how beautiful this mix of color fields was," Hilary told me. "Only when we climbed the tree did we know what we had done."

Branding | Design | Politics

11/10/2008 9:25:50 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00) Comments [5]

Friday, October 31, 2008

Persuasive Paper
Posted by steve

How effective are posters in altering people's perceptions? Are they only worth the paper they're printed on or are they truly persuasive papers? The debate rages at the exhibition Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now at Exit Art in New York, where hundreds of posters, photographs, moving images, audio clips, and ephemera document more than 40 years of activism, political protest, and campaigns for social justice. Many of them have indeed altered perception and triggered action. Curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee and organized thematically, the current show presents issues from Civil Rights and Black Power in the United States to democracy in China to anti-apartheid in Africa to environmental activism and women's rights internationally. "The exhibition also explores the development of powerful counter-cultures that evolve beyond traditional politics and create distinct aesthetics, lifestyles, and social organization," say its organizers. Exit Art exhibitions are famous for presenting a critical mass of unique artifacts and this one is no exception.

Design | Politics | Posters

10/31/2008 5:59:44 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Comments [1]

Friday, October 17, 2008

The Great Debate
Posted by steve

Forget about Lincoln v. Douglas, Kennedy v. Nixon, and even Obama v. McCain. The real Great Debate, the one that will have the pundits sputtering, is Batman v. The Penguin (just click on the frame above or here if you're the type that has problems doing "a Google"). See why the nation is divided on who will best lead us in times of crisis. Wham! Bam! Pow! My vote goes to . . . .

Comics | Politics | Television

10/17/2008 6:15:16 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Comments [0]

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Master of Caricature: David Levine
Posted by steve

David Levine is America's foremost political and literary caricaturist. Although his signature linear style has been copied by more illustrators for more decades than any other cartoonist, no one has equaled his acerbity and wit. He's had more direct hits on presidents and prelates than any other contemporary. Who could forget his Lyndon Johnson showing the scar of Vietnam (above) or Richard Nixon as Captain Queeg from The Caine Mutiny or Henry Kissinger's relations with the world (bottom)?

But as David Margolick writes in Vanity Fair: The 81-year-old Levine's "universe had grown darker and fuzzier." New work appears much less frequently because "He could no longer see very clearly without strong light and magnification, or rely upon his hand: the lines that had always been his friends, the spare, crisp ones that defined someone’s shape, and the elaborate cross-hatchings that gave him soul, he could no longer control. His ophthalmologist had put it bluntly. 'Mr. Levine, you don’t look your age,' he said. 'But your eyes do.' His diagnosis: macular degeneration. Medications and injections didn’t help. Levine worked on, but laboriously. He abandoned pen and ink for pencil, which, as he puts it, 'was more forgiving if I made a mistake.' But the results were plain enough. For the first time—except for those very few instances when it had been too tart for the publication’s taste—the [New York Review of Books] rejected his work." (Photo of Levine by Gasper Tringale, below.)

Levine's presidential caricatures (including those of John McCain and Barack Obama) and selected paintings are on view at New York's Forum Gallery until November 8.

Celebrity | Illustration | Politics

10/15/2008 7:42:57 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Comments [2]

Monday, October 13, 2008

As the Campaign Heats Up
Posted by steve

As the campaign veers towards the finish line, various new initiatives, exhibitions, and personal projects are surfacing. Here are a few worth noting:

On October 15, Parsons The New School for Design, in collaboration with The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, presents an international and interdisciplinary exhibition investigating democracy as a global brand. Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding (above), curated by Carin Kuoni, features an international roster of more than forty emerging and established contemporary artists and an extensive array of performances, workshops, and new commissions. The exhibit is described as "[examining] the desires generated and promoted by democracy as a brand and investigates aesthetic and political systems of representation developed in response to these desires." Given my latest book on branding totalitarian states, I am particularly interested in how branding is acomplished in U.S. politics.

Also on October 15, the Philoctetes Center presents Voters and Friends: Group Influence in Individual Political Belief and on October 22, The Design of Influence: How Images and Words Sway Minds (with me as moderator).

Designers have also produced graphics expressing feelings and anxieties about the current election: NotAnotherCstudent.com by Julia Ames focuses on the lack of intellectual rigor among the nation's highest office holder and seekers (quotes by Sarah Palin, John McCain, and George Bush, below), a site that could easily be described as "Everything you say may and will be used against you"; Spelling for Change, "a political activation kit developed by a group of creative professionals to spread awareness and passion about the Obama campaign"; Seymour Chwast's lapel pin statement about the uncanny relationship of old and new; and 30 Reasons, which offers 30 posters in 30 days about the election--from a particular perspective, of course.

Branding | Conferences | Politics | Posters | Propaganda

10/13/2008 10:33:20 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Comments [5]

Monday, September 29, 2008

Horseless Carriages
Posted by steve

From time to time, art can change behavior. More than a dozen years ago, I stopped eating red meat after seeing Sue Coe's collection of journalistic drawings and prints, collected in Dead Meat, that exposed conditions in slaughterhouses around the world. Just the other day, I became convinced that a ban on horse-drawn carriages in New York's Central Park was necessary to curtail unsafe and inhumane treatment. The impetus behind my change of mind was a shockingly vivid documentary titled Blinders: The Truth Behind the Tradition written, directed, edited, and produced by Donny Moss.

Through original footage taken with hidden cameras as well as interviews with carriage drivers, veterinarians, accident witnesses, animal rights activists, politicians, tourists, residents, and people who have rescued NYC carriage horses from slaughter, this startling, at times difficult to watch investigation exposes the darkest side of this popular tourist attraction.

Watch the trailer here.

Animals | Documentary | Politics

9/29/2008 10:58:55 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Comments [13]

Friday, September 19, 2008

When I Was a Kid . . .
Posted by steve

One of the most heartbreaking, memorable images from my childhood was the photograph (above) of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg on their way to prison, convicted of atomic spying for the USSR and sentenced to death in the electric chair. Their guilt or innocence was always a matter of fierce debate, and many artists, like Picasso, saw them as scapegoats and created art in response (below). The French political cartoonist Louis Mittelberg, also known as TIM, drew a barb at President Eisenhower--pictured with electric chairs for teeth (bottom)--for allowing them to be executed.
Last week Morton Sobell, a co-defendant who served 30 years in prison, and whose son I befriended when we were teenagers, confessed that he and Julius did indeed spy for the Russians. I was reminded of the emotional impact this case had on many of us in New York. On Tuesday, the Rosenberg's two sons, who had adamantly fought to vindicate their parents, finally admitted to The New York Times that they now accept their father had spied, but their mother had not and was used as a tragic pawn in the case.
I was also reminded how as a teenager, I protested for Sobell's release by carrying handmade signs at the courthouse in Foley Square, perhaps my first use of graphic design.

Politics | Propaganda

9/19/2008 12:03:11 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Comments [2]