Don't Believe The Hype
Politically motivated art gets an airing in GOMA exhibition Propaganda?. Curator Reuben Keehan discusses the medium and the message with Paul Andrew.
Gallery Of Modern Art curator Reuben Keehan
is fondly recalling a childhood memory – “propaganda” broadcasting
before him in lieu of regular children’s television programming.
“[It was] cartoons, strangely enough,” he
reveals. “As a kid in the early ‘80s I remember Channel 9 screening some
‘50s or ‘60s Cold War-era odes to capitalism, how private control of
industry led to wealth for everyone. Maybe they’d gotten mixed up with
the Tom & Jerry and Wacky Races tapes, or maybe it
was because the Cold War wasn’t quite over yet. I thought they were
supposed to be educational until my dad walked in and said, ‘What the
hell is this?’ Later I became a big fan of political caricatures in the
news – if cartoons could be used for propaganda, they could also be used
for satire.”
One of the centrepieces in the survey show
of propaganda art is a set of banners by the Indonesian collective
Taring Padi. “They are outstanding,” says Keehan. “Taring Padi having
been working in Yogyakarta since the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998.
They were quite important organisers during that period.
“The collective is very much focussed on
grassroots activities with various minority groups, such as farmers and
the rural poor, and they produce some really vibrant projects in
vernacular forms such as street posters, comic books and T-shirts. We’re
showing four huge banners that have been produced very cheaply as
woodblock prints – a bit of an activist tradition – but they’re also
extremely well accomplished, graphically sophisticated and visually
captivating.”
So, how do we define “propaganda”?
“It’s a tricky question, actually, as my
example of the Cold War cartoons perhaps demonstrates,” Keehan says.
“It’s worth noting that the word ‘propaganda’ hasn’t always had negative
connotations, that it simply meant spreading a message as far as
possible, propagating it. In that sense it’s no different from what we
now call public relations and publicity.”
The exhibition shifts from the most widely
accepted definition of propaganda, which is that associated with
totalitarian regimes – in this case the Socialist Realist-derived art of
North Korea and cultural revolution-era China – to more contemporary
takes on the idea. Work featured comes from artists such as the Luo
Brothers, who show connections between traditional communist propaganda
and the advertising culture of contemporary China, and Tuan Andrew
Nguyen, who shows cola ads, communist posters and wild-style graffiti
jostling for attention in the streets of Vietnam.
You could argue that propaganda is as old as
language itself, particularly when words or images are associated with
communicating the value of one form of social organisation or another.
In that sense, courtly or religious art and even mythical texts could be
considered propagandist, at least to some degree. Its use in
contemporary politics probably extends back to the European
Enlightenment, when ideas of press freedom found various political
factions starting their own newspapers and even commissioning artists to
design and stage-manage mass spectacles. But just about every form of
hegemony has sought legitimacy through art, music, literature and even
sport.
“One of the key attributes of propaganda is
its tendency to brush over some of the more monstrous aspects of an
ideology. Its purpose is to sell the idea, not to unsettle people.“
Propaganda? runs until 21 October, Gallery Of Modern Art.
Paul Andrew
Time Off (Jul 18, 2012)
Q&A....more....
Where and how will these Taring Padi banner works hang in the exhibition and in
what geographic or historical context ?
Formally they hang in a part of the exhibition concerned with print
traditions in political art, which allow for easy reproducibility and mass
exposure of various messages. Taring Padi’s work shows the clear influence of
Socialist Realism, the official visual culture of Stalinism, with heroic
figures paused in mid-action. But their composition is dense and non-linear,
with an energy that is quite alien to totalitarian art, and their message is
one of empowerment and mutual respect, rather than obedience of state ideology.
What is Propaganda exactly- and who decides
if something is propaganda- how and when and where do they decide this, perhaps
by way of reference citing two or three references from the exhibition?
It’s a tricky question, actually, as my example of the cold war cartoons
perhaps demonstrates. It’s worth noting that the word “propaganda” hasn’t
always had negative connotations, that it simply meant spreading a message as
far as possible, propagating it. In that sense it’s no different from what we
now call “public relations” and “publicity”. The exhibition shifts from the
most widely accepted definition of propaganda, which is that associated with
totalitarian regimes, in this case the Socialist Realist-derived art of North
Korea and cultural revolution-era China, to more contemporary takes on the
idea, such as the work of the Luo Brothers’, who show connections between
traditional communist propaganda and the advertising culture of contemporary
China, and Tuan Andrew Nguyen, who shows cola ads, communist posters and
wild-style graffiti jostling for attention in the streets of Vietnam. We’ve
also looked at visual representations of Australian nationalism, through the
critical work of artists like Dianne Jones, and Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata
Dupont. Sometimes, propaganda can just be the work of passionate individuals
expressing their frustration, as in Alfredo Jaar’s ‘Rwanda’ (2004) and Gordon
Hookey’s ‘Defy’ (2010).
And what are some recent examples of propaganda, North Korea for
example- tell me about the way artists represent the ideal/s?
State-sanctioned art in the DPRK is generally directed toward promoting
the ideal of “juche” or the self-reliance of the North Korean state, which is
primarily expressed through images of hard work and cooperation. Stylistically,
the work draws on Soviet Socialist Realism, but it is inflected with local
traditions, such as ink brush techniques and academic painting traditions left
over from the Japanese occupation of Korea prior to World War II. The artists
are particularly skilful and innovative – they need to be to make the work and
its ideas attractive.
What are some of the most monstrous ideals portrayed in the exhibition?
One of the attributes of propaganda is its tendency to brush over some
the more monstrous aspects of an ideology. Its purpose is to sell the idea, not
to unsettle people. Sometimes it’s behind images of the greatest celebration
that you find mass starvation and systematic abuses of human rights. Monstrous
acts are usually only depicted critically, as in the example of John
Heartfield’s brilliant anti-Nazi montages. One thing I love about Heartfield is
that his images were so effective that he was just about the only major
avant-garde artist in Germany not included in the “Degenerate Art” exhibition
of 1937, which was itself a propaganda act by the Nazi’s intended to
denigrate modernist art as brutal and inhuman. Heartfield’s work was just too
powerful – they couldn’t dilute its message that they were the ones who were
brutal and inhuman.
Tell me about the historical setting for this propaganda and what the
image tries to convey and indeed waht you understand about the way the work was
received interpreted and followed or of influence?
It’s really the social documentary work that is most interesting in this
regard. The photographs of Li Zhensheng, for instance, documented his
experiences of the cultural revolution in Harbin in China’s north-east. At the
time, they were largely published in his local newspaper, for which he was a
journalist. We’re included images of public rallies and performances in the
exhibition, but there are also shots of denunciations, humiliations and
executions. Yet these were considered in a positive light by the Chinese
government of the time. It’s only with the passage of time that they begin to
reveal the daily horror that period must have held for people. This is an
instance of a propaganda becoming an important historical document. We can
learn a lot from propaganda – it reveals so much about standards of social
discourse in given societies at various times. Studying it can show those
without a voice ways to be heard by broader publics. And it can make us think
twice about the images and political messages we take for granted in our own
lives.
Queensland went through a very long period of extreme right wing
government in recent history- are there propaganda works from this dark period?
There are some terrific works critical of the Bjelke-Petersen era that
we wanted to include but couldn’t for lack of space. But the posters produced
by the Queensland Film and Dance Centre (now Griffith Artworks) were especially
good, as was a lot of what 4ZZZ was doing at the time.
Below
TARING PADI
Indonesia est. 1998
Buruh bersatu (The workers unite) 2003
Woodcut print on canvas, open edition
242 x 122cm
Purchased 2010. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Woodcut print on canvas, open edition
242 x 122cm
Purchased 2010. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Left
TARING PADIIndonesia est. 1998
Petani (The farmer) 2003
Woodcut print on canvas open edition
242 x 122cm
Purchased 2010. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Petani (The farmer) 2003
Woodcut print on canvas open edition
242 x 122cm
Purchased 2010. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
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