Mob mentality Mob mentality (October 07, 2005)

Political posters spanning nations and the political spectrum have much in common

By Rebecca Wallace

One corner of the Cantor Arts Center is full of fists.

Splashed in riotous colors across political posters, one fist symbolizes a revolt against the Nazis, while another protests the shah of Iran. Still another exhorts men to take up arms in the trenches of World War I. "Lend your strong right arm to your country," the British poster shouts.

The 120 posters on display run the gamut of nationalities and languages and span the years from 1914 to 1989. And yet these strange bedfellows have a surprising amount in common.

While choosing the posters from the Hoover Institution archives with a team of graduate students, exhibit curator Jeffrey Schnapp was continually struck by the similarities. Posters across the board used the same themes, such as fists, handshakes, fingers in a victory "V" and intensely muscled workers and soldiers.

"These posters don't have anything ideologically in common, but nonetheless use the same language," Schnapp said.

Sometimes the commonality is as basic as a dominant hue. Red, for instance, is everywhere. But the eye-catching language of scarlet and crimson can mean very different things: Soviet Red armies, the Polish Solidarity union, or the blood of Islamic martyrs. Or a piece of the old red, white and blue.

Perhaps the similarities aren't so surprising when you realize that the posters are all about the same things, Schnapp said: crowds. They're all trying to get the masses to do something: join, build, vote, beware, fight.

So, Schnapp said, all the poster artists are facing the same question: "How do you depict a common will?"

The "Revolutionary Tides" exhibit, which runs through Jan. 1, is part of a larger "Crowds" project by the Stanford Humanities Lab, of which Schnapp is founder and director. Schnapp's team has assembled a Web site and a soon-to-be-published book about the key role crowds play in society. Topics include everything from overcrowding in cities to mass marathons to the Rockettes.

Schnapp became fascinated by crowds as an adolescent in the late 1960s and '70s, when he was involved in the protest movement against the Vietnam War. Looking back on that time now, he calls it "the last time of mass rallying."

"Why is it that really large-scale mass demonstrations like the ones against Vietnam don't happen so much anymore?" he asked.

One of the reasons, he theorizes, is technology. People now make virtual connections through the Internet, or get their news through television instead of gathering around the newsboy on the corner. Rather than depending on street posters to get their messages out, politicians buy TV ads and record messages for voters' phones.

"The contemporary scene is one of such dispersion," Schnapp said. "Posters have lost the weight they had."

Therefore, the exhibit at the Cantor Center has a feeling of bygone days. Schnapp has crammed tons of posters into the gallery to recreate the feeling of a bustling street with loud messages competing with each other to reach distracted people hurrying by.

Because the posters were vulnerable to being pulled down or covered up, organizations enlisted scores of people to fan out across cities pasting up posters, Schnapp wrote in the exhibit catalog. This often happened at night.

"The city as a whole was to awaken and find itself dressed up in a fresh set of clothes," he wrote.

Slogans in the exhibit are sharp and strong: "Let's Build A Squadron of Dirigibles in Lenin's Name," "War, War Until Victory!" "White-Collar Misery," and "Enemy Ears Are Listening." An old-fashioned Hungarian radio pipes out recorded speeches by John F. Kennedy, Nixon, Hitler, Stalin and other speakers.

Several of the posters were created by anonymous or little-known artists, but bigger names are also represented, such as Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol.

Images of crowds of people are common in the prints, showing the masses listening to Hitler on the radio or rushing to join the Red Cross. Some are chilling, like the anti-Vietnam War poster with rows and rows of tombstones.

And some have more positive elements. Ron Evans, a visitor to the exhibit, was drawn to "Washington Hunger March," a 1933 poster by Lewis Rubenstein depicting a crowd of workers gathered together to protest the grim conditions of the Depression.

Evans pointed out an image of black and white men standing arm in arm, noting that it was made 30 years before the Civil Rights Movement.

"If everybody's hungry, everybody can get together to get what they want," he said.

What: "Revolutionary Tides: The Art of the Political Poster, 1914-1989," an exhibit of 120 posters from various countries Where: Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University When: Through Jan. 1. The center is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Cost: Admission to the center is free. Info: Call (650) 723-4177 or go to www.stanford.edu/dept/ccva.

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