Revolucion!: Cuban Poster Art

Revolucion!: Cuban Poster Art

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Cuban Poster Art

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        Revolucion!: Cuban Poster ArtThe poster was the popular art form in Cuba following the Cuban Revolution, when the government sponsored some 10,000 public posters on a fascinating range of cultural, social, and political themes. Revoluci n!, produced with unprecedented access to Cuban national archives, 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, promoting massive sugar harvests and national literacy campaigns; opposing the U.S. war in Vietnam; celebrating films, music, dance, and baseball with a unique graphic wit and exuberant colorful style. With an introduction illuminating the rich social and artistic history of the posters, and rare biographical information on the artists themselves, this striking volume offers a window into the story of Cuba—and a truly revolutionary chapter in graphic design.

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Colorful, Interesting, Excellent by M. McGrorty
This is a very nice and entertaining work on a fascinating subject. Cushing has done his homework, preserving a bit of Cuban heritage that otherwise might have been lost to history. A fine book for any artist’s collection, or just to flip through on a rainy day at home.

Silkscreen the Revolution! by Modesto’s Steinbeck
I’m a Reagan-loving conservative, but I’ve got an enormous fondness for communist propaganda art. I went to see Mr Cushing’s talk at Black Oak Books in Berkeley on June 30, and his passion for the subject in person was infectious. Certainly, in his brief talk to give some historical context to the posters, many in his audience — largely Berkeley radicals — shuffled uncomfortably in their seats when he suggested that “things aren’t perfect” in Cuba, but while Mr Cushings general support of the Revolution in Cuba was really quite secondary to his brilliant — and inspired — explanation of the history of these fantastic works of art.

The book itself is simply beautiful — with scores of pictures representing each of the major poster styles produced in Cuba since the Revolution. There is sympathy for the Revolution, but no preachyness about the glory of equally available state-rationed asprin or the easy equality of justice in the tropical gulags.

But the book is only about the revolution to give these art works context. It is a book about the brilliant visual artists who provided the color and design splash to their Communist revolution. Each of the posters is a visual treat — I especially like the Army Chess Tournament poster (a hand-grenade forming the body of a Knight) and a few of the abstract Vietnamese-solidarity posters.

Mr Cushing has done a fabulous job learning about the authors of the posters and he has made a brilliant first effort to understand and celebrate communist poster art in an increasingly non-communist world.

Once you get beyond the tedious and slavish devotion to French Belle Epoch posters among the poster art chattering class, there are too few great poster books as it is — even of WW2 propaganda posters — this clearly ranks among them. And to have it be about such a great and underrepresented area of poster knowledge is doubly terrific.

This is a first rate art book and a first rate history book. And if you like poster art at all, this ought to be on your shelf.

Viva Cushing!

Just a Review by R. A. Gage
Composed of a beautiful assemblage of colors, organic contours, prideful expressions of international solidarity with various exploited peoples, cutting edge graphic design techniques, and politically charged subjects, most of the posters presented by Cushing draw artistically from both the traditions of the broadly based, international design styles popular during the late sixties and early seventies as well as those historical subjects, civic concerns, pedagogical projects, and cultural traditions specific to the newly articulated aims of a developing Cuban socialism. Readers familiar with the design styles popular during the time periods in which the posters were produced will recognize that many of the posters reflect the coloring schemes and typographical advances developed internationally during this time. For example, the San Francisco style of design, comprised of bubbling fonts and vivid color arrangements that graphically mirrored the visual experiences of LSD users and hippy culture, can be found in the work of Fernandez Reboiro and Raul Oliva. Aside from overt political proclamations and anti-capitalist polemics, there to exists a wide range of stylistic inventions, visual juxtapositions, humorous `in jokes’ and embedded satire. In describing the thematic cohesion of the selected posters, Cushing also brings attention to the surprisingly “low quotient of socialist realism-the relative absence of heroic, amped-up superworkers and production equipment so prevalent in the revolutionary artwork of the Soviet Union, China and other communist countries.” Not only an intensely beautiful collection of historically significant poster art, Revolucion: Cuban Poster Art presents an important work that deepens our understanding of Cuban culture, politics, and artistic achievement at a time when the Bush administration intensifies its venomous attacks upon all things public, collective, non-commodified, and autonomous of U.S. militarism, aggression, and imperial supremacy.

This beautifully compiled text constitutes a rethinking about Cuban aesthetics that expands and challenges rather than limits our understanding of the role of poster art in the social transformation and historical trajectory of a problematic yet dynamically contoured socialist project; the meaning and significance of which is of vital importance to those deeply concerned with the articulation and formulation of an ethico-political vision rooted to the struggle to obtain basic social provisions, expanded forms of dignity, and socioeconomic justice for those people and countries historically rendered silent under the cacaphonic chorus of imperial capitalism’s triumphalist babble.

The pedagogical importance of such a work derives in many ways from its potential to rejuvenate and widen our understanding of the cultural and political life of Cuba. Secondly, having been archived, researched, and designed by a librarian whose active commitment to transforming both the library profession and reorientating reductionist perceptions regarding Cuban culture toward a richer, more nuanced reading, we’re better able to appreciate the quality of the book and its contents from multiple perspectives.

In these intellectually uncritical times where the shallow end of ideologically suspect, Manichean binaries continue to render pluralistic and reflective forms of dialogue and investigation mute, Cushing’s book represents a refreshing rupture with conveniently amnesic and unreflective standpoints regarding Cuba/U.S. relations. In order to further our knowledge of Cuban political and artistic culture without the cemented weight of baseless hysteria and moral absolutism’s as is commonly constructed and circulated by those Yankee imperialist supporters and pro-globalization apologists in both the “politically quarantined” academy and corporate media; scholars, journalists, cultural workers and educators must begin to extend their understanding of Cuban/U.S. relations beyond merely the accented points of the dominant, either/or rhetoric that ultimately functions to mute alternative and radical readings that bring to bare the complexity of ideological and material factors.

Excellent Cuban revolutionary art… by
This book has excellent Cuban revolutionary art in it… Page after page covering many different artists and styles… My favorite piece is one which has a man crucified to the dollar sign = $… So true, so true… Money over all, even living a real life… I highly recommend this book to anybody who has an interest in revolutionary artwork since this is very high quality, or a place who does book exchange, or indie book stores to stock it for sell, etc… I’m going to buy this for a friend who is a political comix artist, who I’m sure will love it - Savannah Skye…

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Published in: on November 30, 2008 at 4:27 pm Comments (0)
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