Tag: political art

Posters From the Revolution, Rescued and Amazing

 

Photo from Trip Advisor comments of SakijR from Finland
Photo from Trip Advisor comments of SakijR from Finland

This poster, portraying China’s children energetically joining the assault against the U.S., is one of the remarkable Mao-era treasures hiding in this obscure Shanghai apartment complex, home to the Shanghai Poster Art Centre.

Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the years before and after produced an enormous range of political art, clearly targeted with great care to varied segments of the population.   As the Cultural Revolution’s image (and to some degree Mao’s) tarnished though, the new government ordered the posters – and their energetic messages – to be destroyed.

Propaganda exteruir

Yang Pei Ming edited
Museum founder Yang Pei Ming. Photo by Mao Dou

Thanks to this man, it didn’t all make it to the garbage bin.  As the website says: A labor of love, the museum was founded by Yang Pei Ming, who grew concerned about both the poster art and the unusual history <and> started to collect posters ever since 1995 when all the government organizations deleted the propaganda materials due to the political reasons. 

It was a thrilling, surprisingly moving visit; passing through so many years of cynically generated passion and ideas in just a couple of rooms added impact to every poster and its story.  Here are a few; there’s not much more to say.  Let the pictures tell the rest.
shanghai-propaganda-museum 1 Shanghai-Propaganda-Poster Museum1Political poster museum 5

Political poster museum 4

Artists for Obama: A Few of the Many

Obama Graphic hope
I’ve been kind of out of it all week.  Post-Inaugural ennui, worries, lots of appointments… whatever it was, it really sort of shut me up.  But when I saw the Obama video I’ve posted just below here, I started thinking about all the creativity that the campaign, and this presidency, seem to have engendered.

Then a friend sent me this.  I admit I’m a sucker for this kind of music, but it really is a combination of politics and joy that only such a campaign could have inspired.

We all remember Wil.i.am’s Yes We Can.  And Ron Howard as Opie. And Sarah Silverman.  And even Paris Hilton. 

And this, one of my favorites, just for the discipline.


I guess Les Miz must really resonate, because here’s another one.

Obama-mosaic
Of course these are only examples; there are dozens, probably hundreds more – and if you count the images, posters and paintings, many many more. If this kind of creativity goes toward solving our problems, we’re in good hands. Either way, it’s exciting (at least to me) to realize how many vocabularies came together to speak for this new president in the long journey that got him here.