Now in its third English edition.
Japanese edition 2004.
Available for presentations previous venues include UC Berkeley, UCLA, Maine College of Art, Cornell University, California College of Art, Cal Poly, Center for Cuban Studies (NY), University of New Mexico, University of Oregon, Emory University contact lcushing "at" igc.org Also see 2009 calendar from the Center for Cuban Studies
featuring Rene Mederos
Moncada series
Red all over, article in American Institute of Graphic Arts Voice on U.S.-China-Cuba graphics Interview with Lincoln Cushing about Cuban posters inPLAZM
PBPBS documentary "Victory is Your Duty" 6/10/2007
Posters loaned to exhibit on Black Panther artist Emory Douglas
Related books- Visions of Peace & Justice: 30 years of political posters from the archives of Inkworks Press, 2007
¡Revolucion!
Cuban Poster Art by
Lincoln Cushing
Chronicle Books, 2003; 8x10 in; 132 pp; 150 color images,
$19.95 Paperback, ISBN 0811835820
Produced with unprecedented access to Cuban national archives, this book
assembles nearly 150 of these powerful but little-seen works of popular
art. From the 1960s through the 1980s, the posters rallied the Cuban people
to the huge task of building a new society, promoted massive sugar harvests
and national literacy campaigns; opposed the U.S. war in Vietnam; and
celebrated films, music, dance, and baseball with a unique graphic wit
and exuberant colorful style. Includes an introduction illuminating the
rich social and artistic history of the posters and biographical information
on the artists themselves.
"Does
for the golden age of Cuban poster art what Ry Cooder and Wim Wenders'
Buena Vista Social Club did for the country's aged and neglected musicians."
-The
Dominion Post
11/15/2003 (Wellington, New Zealand)
"...a vivid case for the preservation and analysis of this ephemeral
art form."
Miami
Herald, 12/7/2003
"...handsomely designed and smartly documented...may inspire today’s young propagandists." -Steven Heller, Eye, Issue 54, Summer 2004
"There is little else available on this fascinating topic; highly recommended for all collections." -David A. Berona, Library Journal, 5/15/2003
Available on-line through the Powell's
Books worker's union site as well as many fine local
independent bookstores in your area.
Exhibit One Struggle, Two Communities: Late 20th Century Political Posters of Havana, Cuba and the San Francisco Bay Area
Exhibit at the Berkeley Art Center (September 28 - December 13, 2003), which featured posters from Havana, Cuba matched with graphic work by eight Bay Area artists - Enrique Chagoya, Emory Douglas, Juan Fuentes, Rupert Garcia, Nancy Hom, Malaquias Montoya, Jane Norling, and Jos Sances.
I helped to include posters as part of an historic cultural exchange between U.C. Berkeley and the National Library of Cuba; see OAC finding aid.
A small web archive of Cuban posters may be seen here,
catalog of most OSPAAAL posters here.
Non-exploitative source of posters for sale- Center for Cuban StudiesSources in the UK (where buyers can legally travel to and from Cuba) check out the Dulwich Poster Gallery , and Cuban Posters
The
roots of the Cuban poster tradition
Cuba is a literate
nation of 11 million people. It is a small enough that posters are an
eminently viable medium for reaching wide audiences. Havana is a cosmopolitan
capital of 1 million, which has been a cultural nexus between the old
world and the new ever since the "discovery" of the Americas
in 1492. As in Europe and the
United States, lithographs appeared in Cuba in the mid 1800's. The emergence
of a booming film industry in the 1940s - and posters publicizing those
films - led to the first distinctly domestic style. In 1943 the U.S. exhibit
"Originals of Tamigraph: Silk Screen Originals," which included
55 works by 27 artists was a significant impetus for the emergence of
fine-art screenprinting in Cuba. This also spawned work of a distinctly
political nature, the birth of Cuban political poster art. During the
50s some artists applied their talents to printmaking, but it continued
to remain no more a significant cultural form than painting or sculpture.
However, it was the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista and the immense national
transformation that followed that led to the "golden age" of
Cuban posters. The non-commercial mass poster was the direct fruit of
the revolution, a conscious application of art in the service of social
improvement. State resources were allocated for a broad range of cultural
and artistic projects, and posters were the right medium at the right
time.
Poster
production since the revolution
The vast majority
of posters produced in Cuba have been under the auspices of three agencies:
Editora Politica, OSPAAAL (the Organization in Solidarity with
the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America), and ICAIC (the Cuban
Film Institute). Editora Politica
(EP) is the official publishing department of the Cuban Communist Party,
and is responsible for a wide range of (mostly) domestic public information
propaganda in the form of books, brochures, billboards, and posters. In
addition, many other agencies utilized the resources and distribution
powers of EP for their own work, including FMC (the Federation of Cuban
Women), the CNT (the National Confederation of Workers), and OCLAE (the
Latin American Students Association). EP started out as the Commission
of Revolutionary Orientation (COR, 1962-1974), then became the Department
of Revolutionary Orientation (DOR, 1974-1984), and finally settled on
Editora Politica in 1985.OSPAAAL is
officially a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) recognized by the United
Nations, based in Havana, Cuba and with a board of representatives from
all over the world. It is the primary producer of international solidarity
posters in Cuba. Among its many activities has been the publication of
Tricontinental magazine since 1967. At its peak its circulation was 30,000
copies, produced in 4 different languages and mailed to 87 countries.
Included in most issues were folded-up solidarity posters, thus establishing
the most effective international poster distribution system in the world. ICAIC produces
posters for all films made in Cuba, and for many years also created publicity
posters for foreign films shown in Cuba as well. These posters were all
of identical size to fit in special kiosks throughout Havana. There are, of course,
other venues for poster production. The Taller Artistico Experimental
de Serigrafía Rene Portocarrero, founded in 1983, is a fine-art studio
in Havana, always abuzz with students and teachers. Other agencies also
have small shops, such as ICAP (Instituto Cubana de Amistad entre los
Pueblos, or the Cuban Institute for Friendship between the People). And
finally, there are small job shops that will produce work for any commercial
client.
Range
of artistic content and style
One of the characteristics
that separates Cuban poster art from that of its historical antecedents
- the Taller de Grafica Popular in Mexico in the 1930's, Polish
film and political posters, and the state-sponsored posters of the Soviet
Union and China - is the wide range of content and style. This is the
result of several factors, including a long tradition of international
influence in domestic artwork and a revolutionary government that was
relatively open to experimentation and innovation. Although the "fine
art" and "commercial art" worlds continue to exist in Cuba,
a significant amount of resources and talent were funneled into challenging
this capitalist dichotomy. Instead of selling products, artists could
actually make a living using their skills to promote services and building
community. Posters publicized motorcycle-based health brigades, joining
the sugar harvest, working in the sugar mills efficiently, or planting
healthy fruits and vegetables on available land. Some crops, such as tobacco,
posed challenges; one poster pleads for "Your youthful hand"
in helping the harvest , but another warns that "Tobacco burns health."
Sports, education, and culture play a significant role; one poster for
an armed forces chess tournament displays a commitment to play for keeps,
another proudly proclaims "I am studying to be a teacher,"and
a third uses a decidedly take-no-prisoners approach in promoting a conference
on writers and artists.
International solidarity is an important part
of the Cuban culture, especially because the struggle against U.S. imperialism
was being fought on Cuban shores. This deep connection to other underdeveloped
countries struggling for self-determination resulted in many works succinctly
and elegantly showing resistance against colonialism and U.S. imperialism.
The persistent theme of "As in Viet Nam" underscores a deep
national determination to be as self-reliant, brave, and resourceful as
the people of Viet Nam, equating domestic food and industrial production
with the urgency of armed struggle.Although most of the
posters are produced in offset format, many of them (and all the older
ICAIC posters) were done in silkscreen, in limited numbers. Many of the
more popular ICAIC posters have been reissued, sometimes multiple times,
to meet the demand for sales. Almost all of the stencils for the screenprinted
posters were cut by hand, even many of the ones that "look" like large-dot photostencils.
The
current situation Ever since the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in the mid-1990's, Cuba has been
laboring under what has been officially described as the "special
period". Economically, the country went into a tailspin, losing favorable
trade agreements, oil and sugar subsidies, and technical assistance almost
overnight. Ever since then, Cuba has followed a path of rebuilding its
economy through international tourism. Massive joint-venture projects
with Spain, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and other nations have focused almost
entirely on the hotel and ancillary service industries. This process,
though justifiable given Cuba's limited options, has resulted in considerable
distortion of the cultural fabric. All the poster-producing agencies have
had to transform themselves from State subsidy to having to rely on fee-for-service
to become self-supporting. Although an organization such as ICAIC may
have a chance at pulling this off, agencies with an explicit political
message such as EP or OSPAAAL are withering on the vine. This belt-tightening
has affected art production in every way. Even billboard design favors
use of white space because ink is in short supply.
This difficult situation
is compounded by a general disregard for intellectual property rights by
foreigners, especially the United States. Because the U.S. government maintains
such a hostile relationship with Cuba, many people assume that even if copyright
is maintained it is unenforceable. All Cuban artists are acutely aware that
although their work, mostly done for little pay, is a desirable commodity
and can command high prices in the art market. Many Cuban artists were able
to produce clippings from Christie's and others indicating sales of work
in the over-$1000 range. This exploitation is not just limited to the high-end
market. For many years the web-based sales catalog of Barnes
and Noble (a major U.S. bookseller) marketed over 30 unauthorized digitally-reproduced
"Cuban posters," many originally created by OSPAAAL and ICAIC.
More recently, CafePress.com (a commercial Web portal for vendors) displayed products using art by René Mederos and Félix Beltran, but removed them after being asked to do so. AllPosters.com, however, does sell unauthorized (and uncredited) reproductions of works by artists such as Rene Mederos. Aside from exceptions such as the Cuba Poster Project and the Center for Cuban Studies,
it is rare to see sales of originals or reproductions
done with the authorization of the producing artist or agency, not
to mention arrangements for compensation.
The task ahead
Posters are a vital,
expressive visual art which have historically been a medium of choice
for presenting oppositional voices. Unfortunately, the timeless issues
they raise are usually eclipsed by their short lifespan in the public
record. A variety of factors conspire to dramatically limit the number
of poster images which not only survive, but are available to researchers,
organizers, and the viewing public. These include physical deterioration
(bad ink/paper stability, staining and tearing due to poor display techniques,
fading from exposure to sunlight, infestation by bugs and rot, damage
from improper storage, etc.), irreversible damage and loss (insecure storage
resulting in fire and water damage, posters being thrown out as trash),
and privatization (posters being bought up by collectors/dealers). Cuba
is no exception. As in the rest of the world, the very agencies which
produced the works had devoted little energy to preserving them. An example
of this a request by OSPAAAL in 1998 for display copies for an exhibit
on Che Guevara; the agency did not have eight of the 18 different posters
they had produced, and I was able to send down giant digital prints from
archives created by the Cuba Poster Project.
Because of the irreplaceable political and cultural heritage represented
by this ephemeral art, I have been working with other independent poster
curators (primarily Michael Rossman, an independent archivist, and Carol
Wells, of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles)
to develop an approach for documenting and cataloguing the images and
information in such a way that these works will forever remain potent
voices of change. We seek to empower poster-producing organizations
to preserve their own visual history and allow them to breathe new life
into images that were created many years ago. Because we are also concerned
with preserving oppositional poster art in general, we see the documentation
of "small" collections to be key pieces in the construction
of a major archive of domestic and international posters. Much of this
is based on recent developments in the digitization of images and databases
that have only recently become affordable to smaller collections. One
of the wonderful features of a digital catalog is that it is possible
to build a complete "collection" without possession of the actual
artifact, thus freeing producing agencies from the whole separate difficult
task of poster collection and conservation. An image-rich database means
that poster images can be quickly located and compared without reliance
on curatorial memory or access to the actual poster.
Lincoln Cushing,
Docs Populi - Documents for the Public
all images on this site are courtesy of Docs
Populi - no unauthorized use permitted.
Also see:
The struggle to end U.S. intervention has gone on too long- see "Hands Off Cuba Demanded!," 1933
Che Guevara on Meet The Press, December 13, 1964 - youtube clip
