Art Lies, Volume 46, Spring 2005 Page: 51
120 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Anjali Gupta
Perhaps the Gutenberg Bible is the source of the print's
curse-to be seen all too often as a purely utilitarian object.
But the very qualities that may marginalize the print in the
fine art realm-inherent multiplicity, relative affordability and
the potential for rapid dissemination-exalt the medium at
the street level, so much so that popular dissent seems to flow
in parallel to printmaking innovation and practice. (I don't
mean to imply that the medium is subversive or reactionary
by nature, but few other art forms can claim a history so knot-
ted with a socially conscious ethos.)
Less than thirty years after Johannes Gutenberg success-
fully assembled his first press, the poster was born: a small,
manageable, hand-pulled print that enabled the discreet dis-
semination of advertisements-as well as ideas and images.
By the early seventeenth century, the medium had become
such an effective means of criticizing the clergy and monar-
chy in Europe-France in particular-that the mere posting of
unsanctioned bills was forbidden.'
But, as we all know, artists rarely do as they're told. By the late-eighteenth/
early-nineteenth century, artists across the globe-from Honore Daumier to Jose
Guadalupe Posada-were producing and distributing vast quantities of satirical
leaflets, though many were meant more to amuse or commemorate than to insti-
gate social or political change. I say this not to discount the visual power or human-
itarian sentiment of certain printed works, including Francisco de Goya's masterful
Los Caprichos (1797-1799) and Desastres de la guerra (1810-1820) series, but to
reinforce a distinction-and eliminate some existing confusion-between print-
based activism and the fine art print.
In terms of contemporary protest, one can literally plot the last century of rad-
ical movements on a visual continuum, punctuated, no doubt, by iconic posters
of a youthful, bereted Che Guevara and a beautiful, defiant Huey Newton on his
wicker throne. The iconography of modern dissent is obviously a subject worthy of
its own discipline, but with the will to subvert and provoke inevitably comes a cer-
tain amount of legal scrutiny-a reality that activists (rather than artists engaged in
occasional visual editorializing) instinctively understand. While posters of Guevara,
Newton and other revolutionary leaders may well be iconic, the people who pro-
duced these images have long ago faded into oblivion. Anonymity is key in dis-
tinguishing between "agitprop" and artwork that carries a politically or socially
conscious ethos and happens to take the form of a print. Even in the giddy, ideal-
istic days leading up to the riots of 1968, the students of Paris rarely signed their
work-posters that today remain exquisite examples of the graphic and political
power of the print.ARTL!ES Spring 2005 51
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Bryant, John & Gupta, Anjali. Art Lies, Volume 46, Spring 2005, periodical, 2005; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228011/m1/53/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .