Political posters in Ethiopia and Mozambique : visual imagery in a revolutionary context 9789155426422, 9155426425

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Visual /mrrgery in a Revolutionary Context by BERIT SAHLSTROM ,"J

U ppsala 1990 Almqvist & Wiksell International Stockholm, Sweden

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Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis

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Figura· Nova Series 24 ·.; . 2 :'..!-· Editor: Allan Ellenius

Doctoral dissertation at Uppsala University, 1990 Abstract Sahlstrom, B., 1990. Political Posters in Ethiopia and Mozambique. Visual Imagery in a Revolutionary Context. Acta Universitatis UpsaJiensis, Nova Series 24. Figura pp. 180 Uppsala. ISBN 91-554-2642-5. This thesis documents and analyses political posters from Ethiopia and Mozambique, two African countries which have little cultural and historical tradition in common. The dissertation comprises eight chapters. The introduction is followed by the state of research. In the third chapter, theory, method and choice of source material are discussed. Drawings, photographic images, typographical posters, symbols and emblematic compositions are treated in chapters four to seven. The concluding chapter concerns the nature and role of political posters. Previous research has considered the political poster as a mass-produced, artistic medium with propagandistic messages, which reached its zenith before the spread of radio and television. However, this view does not take into account the poster art of the Third World, where the situations differ from one country to another. A comparative study of Ethiopian and Mozambican posters shows that an old, rich pictorial tradition, as in Ethiopia, is less likely to incorporate western revolutionary, socialist iconographical elements and traditions. In Mozambique, on the other hand, colonial experience, urban culture, political awareness and an openness to revolutionary, socialist change, have given western propaganda art sufficient room in which to develop. Political posters have also to be studied as a transitional medium, coming before the revolutionaries have consolidated their position and built up a permanent, monumental art. Interestingly enough, monumental art and mural paintings of a permanent nature in Mozambique have unusually close ties to Mozambican poster art. It is also apparent that North Korean assistance in agit-prop activities has influenced Ethiopian and Mozambican poster a.rt as well as some of the early political monuments. In contemporary societies, political posters have become in themselves symbols of revolutionary change. This is an important reason for the continuous production of posters, even in societies where the general public may not fully comprehend the symbolic language, or the political message, or two-dimensional images.

Key words: political posters, political art, political propaganda, poster history, poster art, propaganda art, revolutionary art, socialist art, revolutionary posters, Ethiopian posters, Mozambican posters, African art, Ethiopian art, Mozambican art, visual comprehension, political symbolism, emblematic compositions. Berit Sahlstr6m, Department of Art History, Domkyrkogatan 7, S-75220 Uppsala, Sweden.

ISBN 91-554-2642-5 ISSN 0071-481 X © 1990 Berit Sahlstrom Cover: Third Congress of All-Ethiopia Peasants' Association. July 1982, 79 X 50 cm, multicolour offset print, Addis Ababa, 1982 (EPSFC Headquarters, Addis Ababa, 1984). I Mayffhe Worker's Day. 38X28 cm, three-colour offset print, Jose Freire, DNPP, Maputo, Litografia Academica, 1.970s (AHM 244, Cat 2). layout: Jerk-Olof Werkmaster Printed in Sweden by Almqvist & Wiksell Tryckeri, Uppsala 1990

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Contents CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION

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Prologue 1 Clarifications 2 Politics, culture and mass culture in Mozambique: A short outline

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Modern urban development 6 Resistance and nationalism 8 National and cultural identity 9 The press 10 Politics, culture and mass culture in Ethiopia: A short outline 10 The Emperor's Ethiopia 11 Ethiopian national identity 12 The Dergue comes to power 13 Ethiopian cultural context and the role of visual images 13 Foreign press in Mozambique and Ethiopia 14 CHAPTER II. STATE OF RESEARCH

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On political posters l 7 The poster as an artistic.medium 22 Posters as illustrated history 24 A technical perspective 26 On caricatures as printed imagery's highest form 26 World War I 26 The October Revolution 28 The inter-war period 32 The Spanish Civil War 32 Posters in Nazi Germany 33 Polish poster art 34 Third World posters 36 Cuban posters 36 Chinese posters 38 African posters 38 Paris 1968 40 Posters seen as a for111 of mass-produced images 40 The language of images 41 CHAPTER III. THEORY, SOURCES, AND METHODS 43 'New' pictures in 'new' countries. Theoretical problems and practical answers 43 The problem of African socialism and socialist iconography 44 Aim and scope 45 Choice of research area and source material 46 V

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The winner's propaganda 49 Mozambique 49 Ethiopia 50 Methods of analysis and presentation of results

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CHAPTER IV. DRAWINGS AND OTHER MONOCHROME ILLUSTRATIONS 54 Mozambique 54 Early FRELIMO drawings 54 Agostinho Mi/ha/re 60 Xiconhoca 61 Changes and developments in style

63 Ethiopia 66 An image of revolution and warrior culture 61 A blown-up action cartoon sequence 69 Abonesh Kabede's REWA drawings 10 Drawings and monochrome illustrations: The first step. Developments in printing technique, content and style 72 CHAPTER V. PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES IN POSTERS

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Mozambique c. 1969-c. 1980 73 Later developments 80 Photographic motifs in Ethiopian posters 85 CHAPTER VI. TYPOGRAPHICAL POSTERS

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Mozambique 92 Ethiopia 94 Are typographical posters made because of lack of time? 96 CHAPTER VII. SYMBOLS AND EMBLEMATIC COMPOSITIONS IN POSTERS 99 Mozambique 99 Symbols and emblems in the Freire School 99 Posters for independence day l 03 Idealized realism-emblematic compositions l 06 Samora Machel depicted as an individual, a symbol and in an emblematic composition 107 Ethiopia l 08 Symbol compositions from the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts l 08 Symbol compositions from the Party Headquarters 112 Some posters made for Ethiopian Peace, Solidarity and Friendship Committee, EPSFC 112 Symbols in landscapes and other artistic and traditional scenes 114 Dawit Menghistu 116 Late posters from the Ministry of Information and National Guidance 117 Old symbols in new environmentsadditional notes on symbols and their use and changes 119 VI

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VIII. THE NATURE AND THE ROLE OF POLITICAL POSTERS. CONCLUDING REMARKS 134

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Political Political Political Political

posters as symbols 134 posters as an art form 134 posters related to other propaganda pictures 136 posters' relationship to monumental art 138 Mozambique 138 Ethiopia 139 North Korean influence 141 yond revolution 143 NOTES

Posters be-

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REFERENCES

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Sources 158 Bibliography 159 ILLUSTRATIONS

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ABBREVIATIONS

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INDEX

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Preface This dissertation has been supervised by Allan Ellenius and Lena Johannesson. Their continuous support and critical advice have been of invaluable importance in the development and completion of this study. I am very grateful indeed to them both. To Hedvig Brander-Jonsson, Gunilla Frick, Birgitta Hogvall, and Gunnel Westring-Bastin, I express profound thanks and appreciation for their friendship, support and the stimulating milieu that they have created in the Department of Art History at Uppsala University. In addition, Olle Bjorklund, ·H ans Griph, Raija Hynninen, Olle Lindman, Chrisler R. Berglund, Jan-Erik Nyberg, Eila Luukas, and Marianne af Uhr have offered me valuable assistance in my daily work. I wish to express my gratitude and admiration for the help given by Viveca Halldin-Norberg and Elisabeth Ragnarsson and their colleagues at Uppsala University Library, and to Birgitta Fahlander and Christina Rylander at the library of the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, as well as to the personnel of the Institute. In Mozambique, during my work in 1984 (one month) and 1985-86 (four months), I was well received by the staff of Arquivo Historico de M0t;ambique. Maria Ines da Costa Nougeira and her colleagues Ant6nio Joao Denis Sopa and Teresa Oliveira became my friends, and were always willing to help. I thank them warmly. To the personnel at the Ministries of Information and Culture, I acknowledge deep gratitude for their efforts to provide me with source material. The Swedish Embassy and SIDA assisted me also, as did volunteers of the Swedish Africa Groups. In Ethiopia (one month in 1984, five weeks in 1986-87 and four months in 1988) I was the guest of the Ethiopian Peace, Solidarity and Friendship Committee. Yohannes Gebreselassie and his colleagues were always prompt to answer my questions-from converting the Ethiopian/Julian calendar into the Gregorian, to providing me with car transportation and accompanying me on visits to artists and various institutions. Without the support and the friendship of the Committee workers it would have taken far more time to carry out the research in Ethiopia. The SIDA Office personnel in Addis Ababa were also helpful in practical matters. In the course of writing this dissertation, I have enjoyed expert help, assistance and friendly support from so many persons. Among those involved during my work on Mozambican sources I wish to mention Albie Sachs, Malangatana Ngwenya, Eugenio D. Lemos, Malin Karre, Ann Bruzelius, Anna Grahm, Eva Ryan-Berg, Christer Johansson (during my stay in Zimbabwe), Gunvor and Rodrigo Goncalvez and my sister Ulla Sahlstrom. Among those who were of considerable help in Ethiopia I want to thank especially Abdu Rahman Sheriff, Seyom Wolde, Girma Kidane, Jill and IX

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Geoffrey Last, Desta Hagos, Yeshi Mulugeta, Hailemariam Worku, Terhas Berhane, and Abezash Wolde Michael. So many have been of great help during my work in Sweden-friends and colleagues, administrators with and understanding for research, and experts in a variety of fields-I thank all, especially Solfrid Soderlind, Linda Lindenau, Bo Karre, Eva-Lena Bengtsson, Margareta Gynning, Ingrid Andersson, Barbro Werkmaster, Rolf Kjellstrom, Carl-Eric Bergold, Annct Nilsen, Borje Magnusson, Lars Bergqvist, Alf Hedlund, Jerk-Olof Werkn:.1ster, Rudolf Zeitler, Karin Adahl, Inger Jernberg, Adam Taube, Cajsa Bratt, Ricardo Timane, Gabriella Oxenstiema, Monica Blom, Olle Johansson, Diana Strannard, Per-Ulf Nilsson, Claartje Aarts, Jacob Jonsson, and my father, Robert Sahlstrom. I express my deep gratitute for the financial support given to this project by the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation (Sarec), the Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA), the Swedish Institute, Anna-Maria Lundin's Travelling Scholarship, Axelsson-Jonsson's Foundation, and the Post-graduate Research Fund, Uppsala University. I have special thanks for Kerstin Hughes and Peter Hughes, who have transformed my Swedish American English into the text below. It has been carried out within stipulated time, sometimes at short notice. Kerstin Hughes, Peter Hughes, and Gunnel Westring-Bastin were also kind enough to assist me with the index. While acknowledging their invaluable assistance, I remain responsible for eventual errors. The illustrations used in the thesis are of uneven technical quality due to the conditions under which they were documented. Finally I am much obliged to my husband, friend, and colleague Tekeste Negash, who has given me continuous support and assistance, and to our daughters Ambesit, Hanna and Miriam for their great patience. Uppsala, September 1990

Berit Sahlstrom

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CHAPTER I

Introduction ..

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Prologue During the 1960s and 1970s, liberation movements in Third World countries struggled against colonialism and imperialism. It was a conflict fought with communication media as much as with weapons. Within the countries, a continuous flow of infor111ation and propaganda was needed in order to justify and win support for the call for liberation and national unity, while the outside world had to be constantly reminded of the hardships and unjust treatment suffered by the people in these countries. One of the media employed to achieve these ends was the political poster, and it is the political poster in two African countries, Ethiopia and Mozambique, which is the subject of the present thesis. In most Western countries, students, church members and trade unionists supported Third World liberation movements with information campaigns, by collecting money and later through the recruitment of volunteers for work in Africa. Organizations supporting liberation movements became factors of some importance in the international mass media campaigns to counter the colonialists' news bulletins and distorted infor1nation disseminated by Western news agencies. They received and produced newsletters, travel reports, posters, pamphlets, photographs and films. The members became increasingly aware of the role played by the mass media in this struggle. My own commitment to the cause began in 1975 when I joined the Africa Groups of Sweden. 1 As a student of the social sciences, fine arts and art history, I was successively drawn to propaganda material. I was interested in political posters for their actual or supposed role in political reality, for their power to persuade, their for111al simplicity and not seldom because of their aesthetic qualities. Some were sent from Africa, some were made by Africans in exile in Europe, others by European solidarity workers. They were used as propaganda in the streets, in demonstrations and on walls. They decorated solidarity groups' and political parties' meeting places and offices and their members' private homes. During the 1970s, the Department of Art History at Uppsala University was a centre for the study of mass-produced pictorial images. Hedvig Brander-Jonsson, Allan Ellenius, Thomas HArd af Segerstad, Lena Johannesson, Barbro Werkmaster and others were involved in different aspects of this field: religious images, mass-produced scientific illustrations, photographic reproductions from the news media, comic strips, illustrations in periodicals and pamphlets of popular movements, and children's picture books. 2 Moreover, Allan Ellenius' earlier study of the public arts and ideologies dealt with another important issue related to the study of posters: the relationship between the fine arts and politics. 3 I

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An essay on Angolan posters and the development of their symbolic imagery and language was my first attempt to contribute to the study of modem political poster art. 4 When the Angolan posters were considered in chronological order, one could see how the symbolic language developed and how new types of events gave rise to new types of posters. Artists influenced by a new aestheticism produced colourful and decorative pictures, while the symbols within the propaganda posters adopted the propagandist form of expression found in the traditional political poster. As a result of the ideological changes around 1968 and thereafter, political and intellectual debates shifted towards a radical, leftist orientation in Europe. Art historians in U ppsala contributed to a modernized view of art and art history, drawing in part on the traditions of one of the university's former professors, Gregor Paulsson. Attention was focused on communicative aspects, taking all social classes into consideration. The development towards greater respect for mass-produced pictures was influenced by such theoreticians and art historians as William Ivins, Estelle Jussim, Herbert Read, Walter Benjamin, Arnold Hauser, Francis D. Klingender, Richard Hiepe and Susan Sontag. Periodicals such as the German Tendenzen and Kunst und Unterricht gave support to art historians with new outlooks while, for example, Graphis retained its character as a medium where aestheticism and commercialism went hand in hand. The Uppsala approach to art history with its emphasis on the socio-cultural perspective in the study of mass-produced images paved the way for the development of Third World poster studies. In addition to this, a stay at Michigan State University during the academic year of 1979-80 introduced me to pertinent American literature and to views expressed on the college campus, where commercial and political poster imagery were granted just about equal and parallel status, to be almost interchangeable in theoretical and methodological discussions.

Clarifications Concepts with inbuilt ambiguity are common within the field of propaganda art. The following are therefore defined or discussed in order to clarify the way in which they are understood and used below.

Revolution: Depending on political preferences, our assumptions of what revolution is all about have positive or negative connotations. However, they cannot provide a good basis for classification when dealing with political events and definitions of ideologies in this study. 5 If not otherwise stated in the text, revolution is used in the sense of abrupt and/or violent societal change. The broad definition bypasses any discussion on the sincerity or justification of the socialist revolutions in Ethiopia and Mozambique. The question is certainly important in a political study, but may be omitted in a project which mainly deals with propaganda as visual images of the given periods. On the other hand, I can see-and to some extent accept-that the results of the study can be used to defend or criticize the political honesty of the revolutionaries. 2

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Socialism: Today the concept has several definitions and is applied to various forms of ideological and governmental structures-both existing and fallen. Representatives of Mozambique and Ethiopia have used the concept frequently since 1974/75 when discussing their nation's development and politics. The structure I refer to here as socialist in the African context comprises the form of government system, normally a one-party system, and a centrally planned economy, where important sectors of the economy are state-owned or state-controlled. African socialist states usually have had good relations both with countries with a market economy and with Eastern socialist democracies.

Socialist iconography: In an art historical analysis socialist iconography is seen as the visual language created in a socialist-oriented environment, or under the influence of socialist ideas in such a way that the outcome follows a certain socialist tradition-symbolically, in composition and with particular compositional elements. Socialist imagery and socialist iconography are not completely separated from, for example, revolutionary, capitalist or fascist imagery and iconography. Indeed, a greater degree of similarity in political iconography between images produced in environments ideologically separate and foreign to each other has recently been observed. 6 This was not the case right after the Second World War, when the need to part from Nazism, Fascism and Stalinism was more urgent than that of defining political posters, propaganda art and political iconography in purely scientific terms. However, the terms can very well be used in the study of artistic expression, without regard to their political colouring. Socialist iconography is built upon classical-antique as well as modem, Western traditions of style and symbolic meaning. To a great extent it has taken its symbolic vocabulary from the French Revolution, but behind that we can also detect old Christian iconography. 7 Aristocratic emblematic traditions in heraldry are also part of this entity. The Russian Revolution was, without any doubt, of great importance for the symbolic imagery of socialist movements after 1917. It has also influenced the Third World because of the role of the Soviet Union as the leader of Comintem and as an international power. While avant-gardist style and form-which were to a great extent developed amongst socialists and communists and with one of the centres in the Soviet Union in the I 920s-influenced Western artistic life, contemporary Third World propagandists and artists have mainly been inspired by the East through contemporary propaganda art in socialist countries. Avant-gardism and the use of abstract fo11ns in Third World propaganda have first and foremost evolved through Western contacts. This does not probably surprise the reader. And it is through the more traditional visual language of the socialist countries that today's Third World poster artists bring back European classical and antique aesthetic ideals. What is then socialist iconography? A too narrow definition would be of no help. Socialism is in itself a concept under debate, and socialist iconography cannot be restricted to only one cultural environment or aesthetic tradition. Nor is Socialist Realism to be confused with socialist iconography. Within political iconography there are, however, certain symbols,

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forms and compositions which are more often used by socialists than others. That is where we can discover what socialist iconography means and what connections it has with other politically identified visual images, symbols and traditions.

Propaganda: The lexical meaning of the word is similar in English, German, French and other European languages. However, there are different understandings of the concept on a psychological level. Political and commercial messages cannot, the refore, be described with similar terms. Moreover, propaganda has had a derogatory connotation in many contexts, just as political messages, political information, and political arts have been treated with disdain. Political propaganda (especially in the United States) has been seriously questioned, while commercial advertising has been accepted as a matter of fact, as a means to reach the public in order to sell one's goods. Obviously this difference has much to do with how economic and political activities are being judged. In Sweden the term propaganda has had a similar but not so strong tendency to be understood in a negative sense. In some cases, it has been used as a neutral definition of activities which in English (and Swedish) can equally be called information or advertising. In socialist terminology and therefore in socialist countries, propaganda is an established and initially a non-controversial term. Agit-prop is a well-known concept, traditionally used in the names of political information institutions and governmental organizations. Due to criticism of socialist governments and socialist ideas within the systems, terms and concepts such as agit-prop, propaganda and socialism have also acquired a negative connotation among the general public in socialist countries. Obviously the understanding of propaganda in the Western, non-socialist, non-communist sense cannot simply be dismissed, although my understanding of the concept rather leans towards a more neutral and scientifically significant definition. Since propaganda is mainly used here in connection with politics and political activities, it rarely poses a problem in the text below. However, it is important to point out that the terrn propaganda is never used to criticize or in any way discriminate in the thesis.

Symbols: The term symbol is defined in Collins English Dictionary ( 1983) as 'something that represents or stands for something else, usually by convention or association'. In art history it is used quite frequently for figurative as well as psychological representations. For example, a woman depicted in a poster among male workers represents women at large; but she is also a symbol of women as one category among others in the revolutionary forces that are depicted in the poster. An attribute is used here as in Collins English Dictionary ( 1983), 'an object accepted as belonging to a particular office or position'. It is a particular form of symbol, but with a more narrow definition. Symbol composition is a term used in this work to cover groups of attributes as well as other symbolic details or images. 4

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The term emblem is mostly used below in its precise meaning, going back to its use in the 16th and 17th centuries, when emblem books were published with symbolic images, usually with allegorical pictures and a written motto. 8 Emblems are composed of images and written texts or abbreviations. Posters contain both images and written messages too, but usually with fairly long rhetorical slogans. Slogans are related to lengthy written political statements and declarations, as are abbreviations to names of organizations and parties. When a poster is defined as emblematic it refers to composition and visual representation where symbols, attributes and abbreviations play a major role in the visual appearance and the understanding of the message.

Politics, Culture and Mass Culture in Mozambique: A Short Outline Mozambique is a country where, historically, few elements unite and many divide the nation and its inhabitants. 9 The climate differs widely between the regions. Rivers, roads and railways have given Mozambique its character of a transit area. Products from the African inland have been transported to the coast and to foreign markets across the country. The pre-colonial period has mainly been studied through oral history, linguistics, archeological and ethno-archeological research. Compared to neighbouring states, i.e. South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania, less research has been conducted on Mozambique. Most of our knowledge derives from area studies and travel reports. 10 The movement of African peoples, especially Bantu-speakers from the south spreading northwards, changed the political and cultural scene quite late in the history of Southern Africa. Pre-colonial and colonial history cannot be distinguished by a definition in time only, since the colonial powers did not affect more than parts of the Southern African region. The Portuguese trade in the 15th century and the Arab and Indian connections with Mozambique did not constitute a colonial relationship per se, but a trade relationship with African kingdoms. 11 There was no definite control of the inland and foreigners lacked knowledge about the peoples and their cultures. Mozambique was not actually meant to become either a nation of its own nor a colony with today's specific geographical and population structure. In early times, her ports were used as a transit and depot zone for Indian shipping. Portugal actually governed Mozambique from Goa in India until the middle of the 18th century. Later, the colonialists planned to form a Portuguese Africa as an area between the eastern and the western coast, but they did not succeed. Instead, Angola and Mozambique became two separate regions under the same rule. Other European powers with colonial ambitions distorted Portugal's strategy and colonized the inland, but the Portuguese were still left to control an extensive part away from the coast, which had hardly been affected by Europeans. The two most important foreign intercontinental influences have been the contact with Arab traders and the colonial impact. The interaction

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strongly influenced the culture of the coastal peoples. The north-eastern area of Mozambique is the southern-most extremity of Swahililand today. Its distinct culture, the Swahili culture, is identified as a trade culture. It has an aesthetic culture of its own, which can be defined as an expression of the Islamic cultural sphere. 12 Calligraphic decorations were and still are common. The architecture was influenced by the Islamic culture. Wall decorations and reliefs were surface-oriented. 13 Neither the Swahili culture nor indigenous cultures have had a Western type of two-dimensional figurative tradition. It is still difficult to follow their aesthetic, iconographical development up to modem, mass-produced visual imagery in secondary sources. Along the great Zambesi river, the main transportation route for metal, ivory and other goods from the interior to the coast, Arab, Indian, Portuguese and Swahili business men were active traders. The Portuguese settled along the river at an early stage in the period of colonization, but did not maintain their power. The African population defended its culture and way of life. Eventually, the European and traditional African social and judicial systems were incorporated with each other. The intermarrying between Prazo owners and Africans provided new dynasties of chiefs which could resist colonial rule better than the local traditional culture. A number of areas where this took place later became strongholds for nationalists in the struggle for independence. 14

Modern urban development Louren~o Marques (now Maputo), the capital in the very south of the country, was an important trade centre for the colony as well as for South Africa. From here, metal ore, sugar, fruit and other goods were exported to an extent that made both production and trade very much dependent on the state of relations between South Africa and Mozambique. Even after Mozambican independence ( 197 5), South African goods continued to be shipped from the harbour of the Mozambican capital. During the 1960s and 1970s, the city grew considerably in its final colonial euphoria. For its white population, it was a modem, cosmopolitan, colonial paradise, while the Africans were driven out to the suburbs. Internationally up-to-date architectural additions to the growing urban centre gave the old city a new skyline. Surrounded by earlier colonial architecture, the centre was an ultramodern creation in cement and concrete. Urban modernization together with old colonial architecture gave the capital characteristics of its own. It was a tourist resort for prosperous white South Africans. Gambling was allowed and prostitution was an important source of income for the inhabitants. 15 Beira, the second largest city area, was also a trade centre. It had a good harbour. The Beira corridor was the main road and railway transportation link for the Rhodesian (later Zimbabwean) import and export trade. Other towns also grew considerably. The northern part of the country had rich natural resources, but they could not be used efficiently during the 1960s and thereafter. The 'terrorists' made life insecure. The Portuguese lost more men and spent more money than they could afford in order to fight the nationalists in these regions. 6

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Fig. I a. View of Maput.o 1987. (Photo: Charlotte Thege.)

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Fig. I b. View in Addis Ababa, 1984. (Photo: UN Photo I S4921 /Roy Witl in.)

Portuguese rul,e has bee.n looked upon as a · humane form of colonization as eviden.ced b,y the racial mingling that too·k place over the decades in the colo,nies. In reality Portu.guese colo,ni.alis.m was on.e of the most cruel fo,rms of oppr,ession Africa ha- ever experien,ce,d . As in South Africa the 7

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society was built on racial segregation. Mestiqos, inhabitants with black and white forefathers, were given a higher status than Africans, but lower than the Portuguese. 16 The regime invited those of non-European blood who wished so, to be accepted as assimilados. These were granted rights beyond those offered to Africans in general because of their educational background and because their behaviour pleased the colonialists. During the fascist period (1932-74) under the leadership of Ant6nio Salazar ( 1928-68), the Portuguese empire was restructured to provide the colonies with an improved formal status within the empire. The Portuguese government's propaganda supported the so-called 'civilizing mission'. 17 'Unity in peace and cooperation' between races and peoples was emphasized. Migration from Portugal to the colonies continued. In 1930 about 20,000 white inhabitants were living in Mozambique. By 1960 the number had reached almost 100,000 and in 1973 it was estimated to be 200,000. 18 But the immigration did not have a positive effect on the economy and development. Mozambique, Angola, Guinea and Cape Verde remained producers of raw material. Primitive techniques and forced labour were used. Even the kind of life that South Africa could offer its black people was often considered better by Mozambicans. Portuguese colonialism gave Europeans the opportunity to lower themselves to the level of Africans, but the converse was not possible. European culture in urban environments and mixed family relations gave Africans an understanding of European culture, while urban Europeans knew little or nothing about Mozambican African life.

Resistance and nationalism The struggle against colonialism and oppression was fought on different levels. Mestiqos, assimilados, blacks and white liberal groups were constantly checked and suppressed by the Portuguese security police, PIDE. 19 Periodicals which criticized the colonial administration and Salazar were published. An important basis for the future nationalist struggle were the few non-whites who received higher education. They were sent to Portugal, since the university in Louren~o Marques was not opened until a few years before Mozambican independence. In mestiqo and assimilado organisations, and later in Portugal in casas da culturas, culture clubs for Africans, Africans met to exchange ideas and experiences. Future nationalist leaders and freedom fighters created a comradeship which was later to be instrumental in the liberation fronts' efforts to unite against their common enemy. 20 UDENAMU, the National Democratic Union of Mozambique, MANU, the Mozambique African National Union and UNAMI, the National Union for Mozambican Independence, were formed to fight colonialism. 21 However, they were built on a membership which considered ethnic and regional background. On 25 June 1962, all three organizations were able to unite under Dr. Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane and FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front, was formed. Two years earlier, several British and French colonies had gained their independence. The African continent experienced the first decade of its post- colonial era. Under President Julius Nyerere, Tanzania allowed FRELIMO to set up its headquarters in the

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capital, Dar Es Salaam. Tanzania also allowed FRELIMO to penetrate into Mozambican land across the Tanzanian-Mozambican border. After Eduardo Mondlane's death in 1969, the FRELIMO leadership was handed over to a committee of three: Samora Machel, Mar~elino dos Santos and Simango. 22 Before long, Machel had become the actual leader in the eyes of the public. He had less formal education-he was a trained health assistant-but had more field experience than his predecessor.

National and cultural identity As resistance increased during the 1950s and 1960s, Mozambican nationalism developed. While some African cultures managed to survive, traditional life also adjusted considerably in order to find a place in the future society. The lack of knowledge among urban populations of their own background and the lack of written history show how deep the gap had become between traditional and modem Africa. In resistance to Salazar's fascist regime, traditional song and dance and modem poetry were seen as forms of national, revolutionary Mozambican culture. Allen Isaacman cites Samora Machel:

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Let art seek to combine old forms with new content, then giving rise to new form. Let painting, written literature, theatre and artistic handicraft be added to the traditional cultivated dance, sculpture and singing.23

In Mozambique: The Revolution and Its Origin (1983) Barry Munslow uses Amilcar Cabral's and Franz Fanon's arguments. 24 Cabral's explanation of why the modem poets are alienated from African culture clarifies the role of many contemporary poets, as Mar~elino dos Santos, Bernardo Honwana, Namoie da Sousa and Jose Cravereinha, but partly excludes the role of urban colonial society and its impact on blacks as well as on mestit;os, whites, Indians and Chinese.25 However, since we are dealing with poster art, which derives from urban society, we need to go beyond Fanon's and other early theoreticians' findings on African culture and nationalism. Eduardo Mondlane wrote the following on 'the revolt and the intellectuals: The paintings of Malangatana and Jos~ Craveirinha ... draw their inspiration from the images of traditional sculpture and from African mythology, binding them into works explosive with themes of liberation and the denunciation of colonial violence.26

He continues with comments on poems by Jose Cravereinha (a close relative to the painter with the same name): Compare any of these poems with the Chope songs ... It is clear that despite the efforts of their authors to be 'African', the former have taken more from European tradition than from Africa. This indicates the lack of contact existing between intellectuals and the rest of the country ... Their strength lay in their enthusiasm and ability, gained partly from their knowledge of European history and revolutionary thinking, to analyse a political situation and express it in clear and vivid terms. 27

Mozambique's modem culture has evolved through long-term intercultural contacts. These include Indian and Arab influences along the coast, which resulted in the Swahili culture, continuous Portuguese migration, Roman 9

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Catholic and Evangelical missionary activities, and Lusitanian28 and Western cultural impact in general through mass media and political, social and economic structures, especially in urban areas. In a more detailed study, it can become problematic to define the specific character of Portuguese and Mozambican urban cultures and their aesthetic and artistic traditions. To a certain extent, the Western world provided iconographical systems, symbols and signs within a context that should be considered as urban Mozambican reality. Moreover, the African impact on Western development is yet to be appreciated. South Africa influenced urban Mozambican life not only through trade and tourism. The miners who went to South Africa in thousands, on long contracts, came home with new impressions, too. Moreover, trade and tourism in Louren~o Marques should not only be seen as an enclave for Portuguese and South Africans, but as a form of cosmopolitan city life. Sculptural traditions, music and rhetoric have a dynamic influence on modem Mozambican culture today. Makonde sculpture has almost become a trade mark for Mozambican and Tanzanian woodcrafts. 29 Another tradition of wood carving, 'pao preto', 30 has become an appreciated artistic expression in southern Mozambique, especially popular in urban areas. Cotton prints for women's dresses are common. Their patterns are partly influenced by Indian-style prints, partly by Swahili patterns, with intricate forms in a never-ending interlinkage of lines and vegetative decorations. 31

The press Political poster art is a mass-produced medium, closely related-as we shall see-to other forms of mass media. Although it has not been possible within this project to study thoroughly the images that were to be found in, for example, daily newspapers and periodicals in Mozambique and Portugal before the liberation, it is relevant to mention them in an outline of a historical background for the history of revolutionary Mozambican posters. Mozambican periodicals such as Clamor Africano, 0 Africano and O Brado Africano were important media in the struggle against racism and colonialism. 32 Daily newspapers and periodicals are today collected in the Historical Archives in Maputo. Ant6nio Joao Denis Sopa has initiated a historical study on daily newspapers during colonial times, but it is uncertain today whether the archival material can survive until it has been fully studied or reproduced on films or paper. The material has partly been affected by the climatic conditions in the archival storage rooms and financial resources are not sufficient to save the entire collection. There are also posters from colonial propaganda, but these are not available to the public due to a 50-year closure rule.

Politics, Culture and Mass Culture in Ethiopia: A Short Outline Ethiopia's capital city, Addis Ababa, is a new settlement, only a hundred years old, but built according to old Ethiopian feudal tradition. Corrugated 10

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aluminium sheets cover the houses of the poor, which stand next to fashionable mansions surrounded by gardens with colourful bougainvillea. There are, of course, both rich and poor neighbourhoods, but it is a fact that only the thick walls surrounding the villas and the protection provided by security guards separate the wealthy from the poor. As in a feudal society, there is an open recognition of the various social categories and their appropriate interaction. (A comparison between the Ethiopian and the Mozambican capitals shows that the division between rulers and ruled, rich and poor, as in Louren~o Marques/Maputo in Mozambique and other former colonial cities, has been the colonial society's way of hindering the less fortunate from integrating with their foreign rulers.)

The Emperor's Ethiopia On 12 September 1974, the military dethroned the old emperor, Haile Selassie, who had governed Ethiopia for half a century. Before him Emperor Menelik and his spouse, Empress Taitu, ruled the country and laid the foundations for the new capital. 33 Political activity was brutally repressed, but in 1974, within only a few months, the feudal state was turned into a country under military dictatorship. The military was no doubt the only category in modern Ethiopia that was capable of bringing about the fall of the old regime. 34 A change through political channels had not been possible. Haile Selassie's connection with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Christian highland culture made him, in the eyes of the people, a leader chosen by God and the Church. A market economy had, however, developed to some degree in imperial Ethiopia and industries had been created. The quota of university educated youths within the country was high compared with those of other Third World nations. Even so, about 95 per cent of the population were illiterate. 35 The great majority of the people were-and still are-farmers and nomads. They had no or very little use of the new technology and the economic modernization in urban areas. Emperor Haile Selassie (1930-74), Menelik II (1899-1913), Johannes (1872-1889) and Tewodros (1855-1868) were all important military leaders who had fought for Ethiopia. Stated in a rather rhetorical fashion, it can be said that to defend Ethiopia's contemporary national identity and geographical structure is to accept a history of wars as well as the fruits of a dominant warrior culture and feudal tradition. Haile Selassie was not only the leader but the prime symbol of modern Ethiopia in his time. With the assistance of the British, Ethiopia defeated the Italians in 1941. Menelik II expanded his kingdom to three times its former size during his warrior crusades and is known in history as the only African military leader who, without external help, led his army to victory in the struggle against a European power (Italy, in 1887 and 1896). Emperor Johannes IV defeated Egypt in northern Ethiopia and fought against the mahdists from Sudan and the Italians. The memory of Tewodros has been restored to the extent of his being glorified, despite the fact that he committed suicide. Indeed, he has been exalted even more than the other leaders. 36 Thus we are once again reminded of the values appreciated in the Ethiopian highland culture: Tewodros was the simple soldier who took it upon himself to unite the I1 Digitized by

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Ethiopian people. Unfortunately he left the land in chaos. 37 It is significant that his life and aspirations, though ending in failure, have served as an example to the military junta, the Dergue, as well as they did to people and leaders in the Ethiopian Empire. Ethiopia was never completely colonized (the Italians had tried for five years, but were finally forced to abandon their aims). Ethiopia was the only country in Africa that won decisive, regular armed battles against European enemies during their scramble for control in Africa. The victories were important historical events which strengthened national pride and integrity. Despite Mussolini's serious efforts during World War II, Ethiopia remained a sovereign state. The Organization of African Unity, OAU, and the Economic Commission for Africa, ECA, two influential intercontinental organizations for African affairs, have since their formation had their headquarters in Addis Ababa. The OA U was founded in 1963 and the ECA in 1966. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Emperor, Haile Selassie, was projected as a living example of the African's right to pride and identification with positive examples, especially amongst the black population of North America and the West Indies. Haile Selassie was even regarded as a deity by the

Rastafaris. 38 Ethiopian national identity Ethiopian national identity is founded on the Old Testament which, according to Ethiopian Christian belief, designates Ethiopia's highlanders as God's chosen people. 39 Their special position is explained by the story of the Queen of Sheba as regent of Ethiopia. She and King Solomon, we are told, had a son who brought the ten commandments of Moses as well as new blood to his African mother country. Among those who followed him were representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel, who now became the forefathers of the different peoples of the Ethiopian highland. Since the tablets with the laws were no longer in the hands of the Jews, and the blood of God's own people had been transferred to Ethiopia, God's people were the Ethiopians. According to the tradition, the commandments are kept in the Church of Zion in Axum, an old cultural centre in northern Ethiopia. The Christian highland culture is only one of many cultures in today's Ethiopia. As in the reigns of Haile Selassie and his predecessors, the republic comprises large populations with Islamic faith as well as people with traditional indigenous religions. Statistically, the Christians form about 50 percent of the population. Yet the highland culture constituted a base on which a national consciousness grew. It was sustained by 1) the Ethiopian Christian Orthodox Church, being among the oldest in the world; 2) the feudal rule, which had close ties to the religion; 3) the traditional belief that the Ethiopian highland Christians were God's chosen people and 4) a documented superiority over interlopers, including European settlers and colonialists. The population is estimated to be 50 million (Mozambique's population is far less, around 8 million), of which the majority still has little or no contact with the government.40 The Oromos constitute about half of the population, but have few representatives in leading positions in the govern12

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ment. In comparison with the Highlanders, the educational level among the Oromos is much lower and they have little chance of influencing national and regional state institutions. The same applies to other groups of the population, especially nomads.

The Dergue comes to power Ethiopian society was forced to change drastically after the Dergue takeover because of the implementation of a land reform which demanded control and supervision by the government. Large groups of the population were moved from one part of the country to another. According to the government, this was necessary in order to solve problems of starvation and soil erosion, but the opposition saw it as a means to control the political opposition. New national popular organizations were formed by the Dergue during the 1970s. Every township and village was organized into a kabele-a neighbourhood association. The kabele was-and still is-the basic unit from which leaders and representatives of regional and national bodies are elected. Kabeles are responsible for the communication of political messages, the distribution of food, the provision of education and health services, for conscription into the armed services and in part for the military defence of their areas. Taxation is paid through the kabele and it has a definite say when any of its members wishes to apply for a passport, register a new family and receive higher education. In 1987 the People's Republic of Ethiopia was declared, and the Workers' Party of Ethiopia, WPE, was formed. Ethiopia was no longer run by a military junta, but many members of the Dergue held posts in the Party and the government. The leader of the Dergue, Menghistu Hailemariam, became the leader of the Party and also president of the State Council. The nationalism of the empire was rooted in religion, in the culture and in history. It became the military junta's task to create a feeling of unity without the first two components: emperor and religion. Before the Dergue came to power, popular movements, such as the Eritrean Liberation Front, ELF, and Eritrean People's Liberation Front, EPLF, had taken up arms in order to gain partial autonomy or establish separate states. Others had reacted against the government policies in general.

Ethiopian cultural context and the role of visual images Ethiopian proverbs, which have already been the subject of recording and research, form an important source for the understanding of the feudal history of the highland culture and of the collective experience of the country's educated. Sayings, rhetoric and some ambiguously significant grammatical forms are a living tradition in modern Ethiopia. The sayings are one of the Ethiopian people's finest treasures. These words of wisdom often have double meanings, which when expressed in a calm, almost scornful manner, often as understatements, not only comment on the given situation but also reflect the structure of the hierarchic, feudal Ethiopian society.41 Similarly, the Ethiopian eloquence of today can to a degree be seen as an expression of a complicated political and social situation in 13

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Fig. 2. Mounted office.rs 2.3x33 cm. gouache on cloth. Painting by Yohannes, Te ema. ( 19'14-19'72). Addis Ababa I '9 66--67. (Courte y of Liliane an.d .Adam Taube., Photo: Olie 1

Lin,d.man.)

whic·h every word. is weighe·d. The Dergue 's attitud.e to s,ocialism and socialist imagery ,during the first years comp,l icated. the situation furth-e·r Christian tradition in arts h.a s given Ethiopian artists and tb.e ir public .a n importa.nt point of departure .. Ethi,opian m.a nuscripts and illu.stra.tions are known worldwide because of their artistic quality and unique styles. F,o-lkloristic p,a intin,g has also spread tb,e ,old Ethiopian visual im.agery in. forms oth,e r than book illustratio,n s mostly to foreigners, for export (fig,. 2). 42 T.he Ethio,p ian national identity is mani£ested in the red yello,w and g.reen striped flag. 43 It is as fre,quently· used as it was before the military take-over in 1974-. The Ethiopian Christian cross is ,a n impo,:rtant religious symbol of nati,on.al cultural value. It appe,a.rs in architectur,e decorative prints wall decorations a on lampshad,es and le.a ther article . and. ,as textile embroid.e ry . Other national symbols are the Conquerin,g Lion ,o f Judah . the well-known monolithic stele ,o f an,cient Axum depicted. on all kinds -o f materials .a n,d goods the Gondar castle and the world famous r,ock churches ,a t Lalibela. 44

Foreign Press in Mozambique and Ethiop,ia Int ,r nati,o nal magazines from .. orth America a·nd. Eur,o pe uch as Tim ,e j\fa· , azi.ne National Geographic Reader' · Digest Life a.nd Ebony a.. well a. l/rica and Africa' ~ o,w , ar,e influential in mode·rn Afri,can urban c·ulture and

Ii£ . In Mozamb,iq·ue South African magazin es and p,ublica'tion:· in Port.u.• gu ·e h.a.. e also· ,c ontrib,u t,. d. The rea de·rs are mainly student . and urban 1

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Fig. J,. Examples of wid ly circulated periodical .

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literates. (No actual statistics can be shown to prove the statement, however.) For students of mass-produced images the final use of the papers is perhaps the most important: pages and cut-outs decorate the walls of cafes and private homes. Commercial and other prints have a great impact on today's Third World urban environment. Enlarging cartoon sequences and decorating walls with magazine cut-outs can be regarded as popular forms of artistic activity. In both countries today there is a rather large supply of propaganda periodicals in four-colour prints from Eastern Europe, Cuba, China and North Korea. Illustrations from these are also used to decorate walls, but not as commonly as others. The pictures display emotionally charged doctrinaire images as developed from the 1930s onwards in the Western world. The foreign socialist propaganda magazines are sometimes published in Portuguese for the Mozambican public, while English versions go to Ethiopia. Only a few are translated into Amharic, the Ethiopian national language. To my knowledge there is no study on how these and other foreign periodals are received in Ethiopia and Mozambique. However, it is clear, when discussing the matter with young, educated Africans, that the socialist periodicals are disliked as much as Western commercial magazines are accepted. To a large extent this is true irrespective of the reader's own political stand. The articles and their rhetorical style found in Soviet, North Korean and other magazines repel rather than attract readers, but the pictures can still be liked. Cuban publications, such as Gramma, have a better reputation than other magazines and newspapers from socialist countries. But these rather general statements about a small group in the two societies do not give any clear indications of how the same periodicals are received in regular kabeles in Ethiopia or by members of mass organizations on the grass-root level in Mozambique. In kabele centres I have found that Russian and North Korean printed matter, such as Lenin's collected works and collections of Kim II Sung's speeches, has been read by some members. Such publications often reproduce portraits of the above-mentioned leaders, but also include portraits of other leading politicians, colour reproductions of city architecture, photographs of monuments and propaganda paintings.

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CHAPTER II

State of Research On Political Posters Although researchers from quite a wide range of disciplines have found an interest in political posters, African examples have seldom been used. Historians have appreciated the informative and illustrative value of posters in their presentations of certain political periods. Art historians and researchers on visual imagery and media have shown new developments in composition and style. Poster collectors and connoisseurs have brought the aesthetic values to our attention even more than art historians. Political activists have saved posters as historical documents with personal attachment. It is from these points of departure that we find political posters treated in published literature: as material with infor1native and illustrative value, as historical documents, as a medium of importance for the history of art and iconography, and for bearers of aesthetic value. My own contribution to the Ethiopian and Mozambican history of posters is based on the assumption that political posters are closely related to other mass-produced pictures and should be studied in that context. However, it has been difficult, since little documentation and few studies on magazine illustrations, photographic illustrations, and commercial posters from the same cultural contexts exist, and an analysis of such material is yet to be published. The role of posters as a separate category of mass media is, however, in my opinion, also something worth analysing. Political posters are not often pointed out or dealt with as symbols in themselves, but this is certainly an underlying factor in many of the above-mentioned authors' contributions to poster history. Among the general surveys of the history of posters there are works which deal with wider concepts of poster art, yet which are nonetheless relevant to the study of political posters. Such works are therefore included in the discussion below. General surveys of poster art can, if not seriously studied, be seen merely as an introduction for the beginner, although several of these works have developed views on political posters which have become points of departure for researchers as well as for the public. Works of Bevis Hillier, Maurice Rickards and John Barnicoat can be mentioned here. 1 Hillier combined the history of posters with biographies of poster artists. Particular emphasis was laid on the so-called La, Belle Epoque of the latter half of the 19th century, when Jules Cheret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edouard Manet and other French artists and lithographers became known to and appreciated by a large public. Like most-if not all-modern historians of poster art, Hillier started from the assumption that the European technical development was of basic importance for poster production. Alois Senefelder's lithographic printing technique from the 1790s meant 17

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that pictures could be printed in large editions, in large format and without costly transfer processes from the original to the copies. The litho-stone could be worked on directly by the artist. Hillier's contribution was not only meant to be a historical survey, but it was also a study of the phenomenon of poster art and its aesthetic qualities. The book was published before many other general surveys and seems to have been one of the major sources, yet without hardly ever having been referred to, either in articles or subsequent surveys. Hillier pointed out the national historical development of poster art, laying particular stress on the American contribution to the history of posters. Aubrey Beardsley, F. Scotson-Clark, Will Bradley, Edward Penfield, Maxfield Parrish et al. were paid due respect. Other publications, however, have considered the history of posters more in a European and international context. Posters differs from other volumes, in that other authors have seen American commercial art as following in others' footsteps rather than as a source of inspiration. Hillier's views on poster production during the world wars and the apparent differences between these two periods were also interesting points of departure for the study of the 20th-century poster. According to Hillier, World War I posters are characterized by their cruelty in motifs, to which the audience reacted more strongly than the publishers had expected. Enemies were depicted as grotesque, evil beings opposed to personifications of goodness, honesty, braveness, etc .. 2 Concerning World War II, Hillier wrote: There was no need for recruiting posters, as there was mass conscription. The main new themes were: careless talk costs lives ... personal cleanliness and hygiene advertisements to prevent epidemics ... appeals for blood donors; and many suggestions that people should grow their own food.3

Maurice Rickards started from an assumption somewhat related to that of Hillier. World War I posters were 'commercial' while 'the true poster' could not be seen until World War II and the period after, when 'the poster of protest and revolution' appeared. Rickards contributions are short and easy to read. His Posters ofthe First World War ( 1968) was published before Hillier ( 1969) and include some basic arguments which Hillier also discussed. Combining traditional scholarly ideas and a rhetorical, sensitive form of writing, Rickards shed light upon commercial as well as political propaganda in his publications. According to Rickards, the poster as a concept acquired its special meaning during the 19th century: ... the poster must be a separate sheet, affixed to an existing surface (as opposed to those markings and images rendered directly on the surface). Secondly, it must embody a message, a mere decorative image is not enough. Thirdly, it must be publicly displayed. Finally, it must have been multiply produced; a single hand-done notice is not a poster within the meaning of the act."

He included the physical environment in his studies, as well as the significance of the written texts in combination with the images, the effects of condensed compositions, the question of perception and time, and practical problems of printing and distribution during periods of war. He found 18

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that the political poster reached its qualitative, aesthetic peak during the Spanish Civil War, when both satire and monumentality were expressed. The fact that the posters were made by professional artists had important consequences, as did the fact that the posters were produced in the actual theatre of war. The reality was transmitted via the eyes and hearts of the artists. 5 Rickards also paid attention to North American poster art of the 1960s. In his opinion, these posters are to be considered as works primarily designed for the walls of American homes and not for the streets. Cuban poster art, he argued, is unique on account of its fully developed aestheticizing language of forms which supports rather than reduces the effect of the texts. 6 He argued that it was during World War I and the Russian October Revolution that political posters were used in their full capacity and became posters, clearly distinguished from the broadsheet. 7 This is important for the student of poster art, since acceptance of Rickards' findings would place poster art as a separate category among other posters, and also among other forms of mass-produced images, depending on the chosen perspective. For example, to which category do Cheret's and Toulouse-Lautrec's posters belong? Rickards was critical of Chinese poster art. He found that it was not based on 'classical chinoiserie' but on foreign conventions, such as the wide-angle perspective of Hollywood commercials. 8 It is worth noting, and it is regrettable, that he did not go into how Russian revolutionary art and Socialist Realism influenced Chinese poster art. It would probably have changed his views on Chinese revolutionary art in general. Posters of Protest and Revolution ( 1970) is a short publication, written with feeling, on revolutionary and propaganda poster art and its peculiarities. Rickards returned to this subject in his thin volume on The Rise and the Fall of the Poster ( 1971 ). He put the poster into its context of printed matter, discussing its relation to text and image and how the poster medium is regarded in different historical periods. He underlined the power of the printed word and how a poster's message is intensified by the heritage which the poster medium itself administers. During La Belle Epoque in France, typography was introduced into the pictorial composition, most often written by another hand than the artist's. Posters were accepted as works of art and became collector's items, but, Rickards pointed out, the period was limited geographically to France and Central Europe. 9 The period between the two world wars was seen by him as the 'Second Golden Age'. 1 Commercial artists, as E. McKnight Kauffer and A. Mauron Cassandre, paid careful attention to the role of the image in marketing goods and they produced commercial pictures which became classics. Rickards provided poster research with important concepts to be analysed, although they needed more explanations. He noted that poster art thrived during a period when other mass communication media developed, i.e. radio, film and television. The propaganda poster became a support for radio information rather than an independent source of information during World War II. 'The poster goes to pieces', exclaimed Rickards in connection with the spread of commercial radio and later television. 11 The televi-

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sion medium demanded a new type of image and photography was used more often. It became a teamwork to produce a mass-media image. The unfolding of history into contemporary times seems to contradict Rickards' own declaration of the death of poster art. Nor does his statement coincide with the enthusiasm he showed for Cuban post-war posters: 'Cuba is another poster world of its own'. 12 The 'reprographic revolution gave the public access to reproduction techniques which earlier had been the professional 's' . 13 In Cuba this usually meant silk-screen printing. Linoleum prints, cheap offset printing machines, metal graphic techniques as well as woodcuts have also been used all over the world by poster artists and amateurs. Unfortunately, Rickards did not follow up what happened when amateurs in solidarity organizations and liberation fronts took over. According to him, the 1960s were only 'the age of pseudo-posters'. 14 Photographic enlargements of singers, musicians and sports stars, sentimental and romantic nature scenes and principally all pictures made in large format were, Rickards argued, wrongly called posters. Contrary to Rickards, John Barnicoat described poster history as a relatively uncomplicated history of style. The celebrities in the history of poster art were accordingly mentioned, from Jules Cheret, Edouard Manet and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, to Alphonse Mucha, Theophile Alexandre Steinlen, Will Bradley, the Beggarstaff Brothers, El Lissitsky, Lucian Bernhard, Ludwig Hohlwein, Ernst Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, John Heartfield, Kathe Kollwitz, Jan Lenica and Raul Martinez. He related poster history to art history in general through the names of artists and the conventional use of periods with regard to time and style. The political poster was given a short section under 'Poster and Society', but was also incorporated in the general history, especially when created by established artists. The Spanish Civil War and its photo montage was shown special attention. John Barnicoat wrote that political posters did not exist as a specific form of poster art before the end of World War I. As we see, this coincides with Rickards' and Hillier's views on the differences between posters from the two world wars. It was, according to Barnicoat, in revolutionary Russia and in other parts of Europe during the interwar period, that the 'true political poster' was developed. 15 The 'true political poster', according to Barnicoat, could not be accepted in certain countries, and therefore there were two lines of development after 1919 in the history of the poltical poster: I) the 'commercial poster', meaning recruitment advertisements, etc., and 2) the ideologically propagating poster. The categories were illustrated by two classical exponents: Your Country Needs You by Alfred Leete (fig. 4), the same motif which later was to be used by Montgomery Aagg in the United States and by Dimitrij Moor in Russia, and Kathe Kollwitz' Nie wieder Krieg (fig. 5). 16 After World War II, poster producers were subsequently more often organized in small groups with limited financial support. The poster medium was confined to small minorities, and the poster technique was limited to organizations and artists with lack of money and technical resources, as during the student protests of 1968 in Paris. The posters produced during this historic uproar became the golden age of the modern political poster,

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Fig. 4 .. Your Country·Needs You. Alfred Leete- 1914. (Source: Barni.c oat ( 1975) ill. 237 (Imperial War Museum).)

when ,collective work by professional artists a·nd a,rt students gave the po,s ters a specia.l and an outstanding quality. Lik,e Rickards Barnicoat made interesting comparis,o ns-and. de.fined the differences-betw,een id,eological propagand.a and co,m mercial advertising.. In both cases there existed some form of 'selling' in their messages- although Chinese posters (billb,oards) Barnicoat maintain,ed were n.ot as ban.al as the commercial. pro-

ductions.17 Cub,,an ,artists have dared to use conflictin.g styles and aesth,etics in contrast to that which has traditionally been ,expected in political propaganda. They have develo,ped their o,wn form not under such extreme 1

econo,mic pressure as experienced by the students and artists in Paris 1968,

Fig. 5 .. No More War.. Kathe Kollwitz I.924. (So:urce: Bamicoat ( 1975) ill. 255. (Galerie ,St. Eti enne 1ew York) . ) 1

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yet with the same strong revolutionary pathos. 18 Moreover, the Cuban poster artists have had both time and opportunity to allow their art to be influenced by the great artists.

The Poster as an Artistic Medium Alain Weill's views on political posters prevented him from using the concept in any of the titles or subtitles in his large work The Poster. A Worldwide Survey and History ( 1985). He presented the poster as a medium of its own, with close connections to other forms of mass-produced media. The poster is made for the publicity of chosen messages and 'Life in society implies publicity'. 19 Therefore posters and poster art have a natural place in society not only due to their aesthetic or artistic value, but to their functional role as well. Weill wrote poster history from the point of view that society actually used the medium and that people of power showed it due respect. While Rickards saw La Belle Epoque as one of two highlights in poster history, Weill could only see one golden age. What the French poster artists of the 19th century achieved, according to Weill, has not been surpassed since. Before Jules Cheret, Toulouse Lautrec and others, towns and cities had been inundated with posters. 'The poster existed but the art of advertising had not yet been born'. 20 Weill emphasized the close connection between poster art and magazine covers. 21 He accepted that many political posters could be seen as enlargements of caricature drawings and concerning the late 19th-century German poster Weill argued: ... advertisements were only dreary enlargements of art school productions, resolutely historical in the purest style of the Bavarian renaissance.22

Rickards did not include posters from the First World War in his definition of 'true political posters'. Since Weill attacked the problems from a historical perspective which included mass-produced images and anonymous works, he avoided difficult and unnecessary problems of definition and was forced, through the study of symbols and picture analysis, to see the meanings of the messages rather than the meaning of the medium. According to Weill, West European artists connected to De Stijl simplified and divested the poster of its traditional decorative function, and returned to its communicative value. 23 What was new in De Stijl and Bauhaus according to Weill, was later confronted with German Nazi and Italian Fascist art philosophy, which brought out Roman classicism and heroism as ideals and style in their propaganda. But while the German poster artists' situation deteriorated, a few Italian avant-gardists were given the opportunity to develop poster art formally as well as typographically. 24 During the Second World War poster artists were asked to work on safety and civilian defence. For this, wrote Weill, there were no ready-made symbols to be used. 25 Partially expressed metaphors in the slogans and images created a new type of war poster. He concluded that the post-war period was characterized by the discovery of 'the visual gag' and the internationalization of poster art. 26 Posters for cultural events and commercial messages were the centre of

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Fig. 6. Do Not Buy South African P-roducts!. 42 x 30 cm . blac.k-andwbite offset p,r int Isolate South Africa Committee Swed.e n , c. 1

1980. (Source: Africa Groups,of .Sweden . Stockh,olm.)

interest in Weill's surv ey . He rais,ed the p,r oblems of p,h otography for commercial adv,e rtising: 'Photography is materially· founded on deta.ils while the poster sh,ould be simp,lified and powerful ·..27 Television took o,ver lat,e r on which , Weill argued. ,e xplained the poster medium's subsequent development. In his op,inion only Polish and Cuban (p,e rhaps also Chinese) poster artists have ,e scaped a.r tistic deterioratio,n. Polish poster art bas until this deca,d e manifested a strong symbolic language with surrealist tendencies. It was in 'the histo,ry of the socio-cultu.ral. poster after tb.e war, that Polish poster a.rt played a decisive role accordin.g t,o Weill.. 28 This is prob,ably true , but i.t sho,uld be b,o rne in mind. that Swiss poster art and 'highbrow' po,s ter art made b,y financially well-off companies and. a.d vertising ag,e ncies ·w,e re not included in his dis,c ussion. 1

In his eh.apter '·T he Im.ages ,o f Revolt, Weill discussed the development o,f posters from th.e American hippie movement t,o America.a. anti-w.a r propaganda P:us.h Pin Studio in N,ew York an,d the stand of the University o·f C'a lifomia students during the Vietnam war. 29 Th.e political turb,ulence inclu.ding th•e struggle against racial discriminatio,n gave poster a.r t in the United States a dynamic role,. The initiative th,en accord.ing to Weill crossed the Atlant.ic to Europe by· wa.y o,f London the· capital o·f yo,u th cultur,e in those da.ys. lt is d.ifficult to v,e rify this historical ,o utline. Weill him elf menti,o ne,d th,

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Provo movement in the Netherlands, which had already started in 1965 and the Paris unrest of 1968, but without relating them closely to world events. If, however, his conclusions are correct, Weill has given us a background history to the situation in which solidarity movement posters were created. Like the posters of protest during the Vietnam war, the solidarity movement posters were-and are-messages of an 'anti' type: anti-apartheid, anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism. But posters of solidarity movements were already widespread in the 1960s in the United States and Europe and this was intensified during the 1970s.

Posters as Illustrated History Max Gallo, a historian by profession, explained to the reader in few and very direct words his purpose in writing The Poster in History (1974): I wish to show through posters the evolution of society, of customs, and of ideas; to see historical events and ideologies come alive in posters. 30

He argued that, beginning with the French Revolution of 1789, the poster as a medium reflects and illustrates political events and can thus be studied from this point of view. According to Gallo, the poster can be used as a valuable source of information especially during times of war and instability, due to its strong emotional and symbolic imagery and formal language. 31 Attributes, symbols and style in commercial and political imagery clarify aspects which can be difficult to express in written documents. This point of departure gave the author the opportunity to write a colourful and popular expose. But he did not only use mass-produced pictures as mere illustrations, he also put them into a perspective of technological development. He pointed out the great changes in society, among which the printing industry could be seen as one of the more important factors in the making of modem Western society. He also considered certain aspects of poster art, its imagery and style and its role in society, which he used as points of departure for a general analysis of society. Motifs of women and children can be seen in poster art and commercial imagery to signify the roles of gender and child. Men and women were illustrated during the wars in their traditional roles, where the man defends the woman; the family was a sacred institution and as such was to be protected, but it could also be used as a symbol when the message actually concerned national defence (fig. 7). During World War II the armies were made up of amateurs, i.e. enlisted, non-professional soldiers, who were expected to feel encouraged by propaganda which referred to aspects of private life. 32 This was a new aspect and contribution to the discussion on such concepts as 'true political posters' and 'advertisements for war and the observed difference between posters from the First and the Second World War. Just as other authors had done before, Gallo stressed the similarity between the posters produced by both sides during World War II, once the propaganda machines had come into action. The total war involved the whole population and all forms of mass media in the countries concerned. Radio and films had an important role to play, 24

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Fig.. 7. D.addy. what ,did YOU do in the Great War? Poster b,y Saville Luml,ey published d.u ring World War l. (Source: Weill (1985)., p. 129 D·O. 212.)

but it was not acco·r ding to Gallo/Quintavalle until the Vietnam war that

mass media followed a conflict clos•ely for the first time ,and were able to inform the· p·u blic directly from the fr,ont. Meanwhile post,ers appeared arou.nd the world protesting against the American intervention in Vietnam. Howeve·r neither Gallo nor any other a.uthor I ha.ve come, .a,cro,ss have seriously· dealt ·with Pro-Am,erican poster pr,opaganda. No doubt the post,e r med.ium' · limitations in rea.ching its audi,ence and the possibility of the American administr.ation to exploit television radio. ,daily ne·wspapers and magazin "S provided scant reason fo•:r the propaganda ap,p aratus to us•e the streets. This lends support to Rickar,ds·· and Barnicoat s statement that the poster has beco,me a medium £or organizations with limite,d economic resources. Q,n e might easily draw the same co,n clusion when considering the poster in the perspective o;f technical de·velopment- w·here the poster mediu.m is categorized as a primitive mass-media fo.r m doom,ed in advance to disappear wb,en new printing t,echniques and faster mass communication su.persede ol,d mass-media forn1s and tr,a,ditions. In 1974 wh,en Gallo s w,ork was fir -t publi he,d Africa hardly existed on the map in affairs d.ealing with international modern cultural ,a nd political •ev,e nts where mass-produced images .a nd political propaganda we·re u e,d _ Gallo rightly pointed out that by 'the mid-1 '97'0 the ,cultural and ,·oc'ial 2.5 Digitized by

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separation was greatest between the West and the Far East, not between the United States and Russia'. 33 African poster artists or producers were not dealt with.

A Technical Perspective A technical perspective on how posters ought to be designed to obtain desired reactions was laid out by Gary Yanker in his Prop Art. Over 1000 Contemporary Political Posters ( 1972). It contains a considerable number of political, cultural and historical overviews and calls attention to one of the real dilemmas for researchers, namely that important facts are not only to be found within the academic milieu but also in the files of commercial advertising agencies and national secret services. Valuable findings in poster research, according to Yanker, can be worth keeping as war secrets or by consultants, designers and artists as valuable 'know-how' on which their business is built. 34 Yanker grouped motifs and systems of poster composition according to a political right-left division, an interesting starting point, although the placing of certain symbols is arbitrary. 'Fire', according to Yanker, is a 'right wing symbol'. 35 My own findings show, however, that 'fire' is a symbol commonly used in Africa by liberation movements and socialist state governments and used by both adversaries in the war before Zimbabwe's independence in 1980.

On Caricatures as Printed Imagery's Highest Form Political Graphics ( 1988) by Robert Phillipe reflected the changes in the scope of political imagery that took place during the late 1970s and the 1980s. For Phillipe, it was not the technique or the communication aspects that formed his point of departure, nor was it the size of the pictures or their artistic quality. Political posters are included as one of many ways to use and publish what Phillipe called 'political graphics'. He defines his area of study as 'prints' where satire and caricature are closely connected to the technique in which they are visualized: The print is a mass medium-universal, direct, immediate, and pithy. Thus it often creates its effect on a rather earthy level. and will always favour satire and caricature over plain narrative. 36

To present caricatures as the highest form of printed imagery is, to the student of African political posters, a somewhat limited perspective, although the connection between printed images (the technique) and caricatures (the genre) is well worth exploring further. 37

World War I When dealing with literature concerning limited historical, political and cultural events, we find that collectors and connoisseurs have been most 26

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Fig. 8,. Ludendorff Fund fo.r t.he War~Disabled, Ludwig Hohlwe.in, Miinchen. (So,urce.: Rickards Posters .o fthe Flrsl World War (1968) il). o,o. 127.)

helpful in gathering, the material . and in pu.b,lishing a.nd analysing the ., pr1mary sources. Mauric,e Rickards' Posters of the Fi.rst World War (1968) will serve: as an. example of ,a collector''s contributio·ns to the field. It was publishe,d before .his m•ore analytical works o·n political post.,ers. He took n•ote of th,e great importanc,e of th,e poster me,dium in a s.ociety free from radio and televi . . sion. Posters were used to market just .about anything that was destined for the general public during th,e first dec.ades of the 20th century. The medium ha,d a hig'h status thanks to the famous artists of La Belle Epo.que , which in turn made a po,ster a collector's item. Rickar,ds separated poster production d.uring the war into three periods:. during the first period posters s·p,read the ·message that me·n and. mon.ey were needed to carry on th.e war- d.uring the second period the population was asked to do without articles and resour,ces needed by the soldiers and to acti v·ely sup,p ort the homefront · du.ring th,e third period posters carried ,appeals to help the victim.s an.d asked the peo,ple to make more sacrifices. The message had then .a thr,eatening tone an,d was no longer a bumble request for help . 38 These find.ings coincide with what Hillier B.arni,coat and ,o thers had argued. Rickards pointed out the post,er''s lo,w aesthetic and artisti,c quality. In En,glan,d originals wer,e made by the printers. They ha,d little interest in how posters looked, wishing only to publi h ,a , cheap,Iy as possib,le. Arti ts such as Alfred Leete, Pryse an.d Brangwyn and. Frank Pick s po ter. .pr,om,ot1ng activities i.n Lond.on were ,only exceptio·n which pro,ved th,e rule , accord. . 1

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Fig. 9 .. The So·ng ,o f Work~Arise·, Warriors of Work. The Great ,Country Awaits You. 52 x 68 cm multicolour lithography, : ·. Kocergin, text by D. Bednyj , Masco,w i 920. (B S 2299 UUB Vc:7)i

ing to .R ickards. In the United States , however ,a rt students and commercial artists fo1 med groups and ,offered their services to the nation for p,r opaganda purposes. Rickards believ,e d that it was ,only Lu.d wig Hohlwein s German p,o sters (fig. ,8) that sho,w ed considera.b le a,e sthetic and. artistic development: With an ,eye th.at saw the world as a simple stat,ement of t,o,n e and colour he dismisse•d. th.e lithographic tex.t ure and the pencil ket.c.h ·· h.e entered. a. new world ,o f vision. ·9

The political propaganda was, ho,wever generally much the same regardless of w.hich side pro,du,ced it . Rickards argued.

The O,c tober R,e volution Being one of the •decjsive historic.al events in world .history and essential to the stud.y of the political poster the Russian Revolution and its propa.gand.a hav•e been dealt with in mono,graph:s as well as i:n surv,eys costly illustrated works and shorter articles. Styles ,a nd a.estheti.c qualities hav,e interested the author · b·u t also the ,c onnection to folldoristic tradition.s. In the case of images tb e lubok tra,d1t10,n has b,een comp,a re,d with post,ers and other printed m.iedia. T.he Octo,ber Revolution is without doubt an importa.n t time and p riod fo,r modern poster research to study and to, use in compari1

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'Fig. I 0. Come to the Po.Ii h Front! The ,Commune Grew .Strong in the Hail ofBullets. 62 X 52 ,cm . tw·o-colour lithography , I. Maljutin t•. xt by v ·. Majakovsky ROSTA, Moscow 1920 (B-S 141 ,6 UUB 1:4).

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,C ultural ·p olicies ,d uring the first years of the Russian Revolution an,d the theoretical a.nd aesthetic de·v,elop,ment of Socialist Realism have b,een dealt with in art history stu,d ies that ,go beyond poster histo•r y .. Most authors make tb•e point that posters were importa·nt instruments in •decommercializing (my term) the artists·' activities and. making them into publicly e·m ploye•d artists with better social security· but with less freedom o·r ·work . and with expectations to serve and. •d efe·n d the revolution .. ROSTA-Windows and other works created b,y Mayakovsky and his colleagues are th.e most fam•O•us examples. Above all it ·was the avant-garde poster art as d,evelope·d by

Ma.yakovsky and Ceremnyc.h (fig. 10) that inte.rested West Europeans. In Ryska afjischer 1917-1922 ,( 1984) Linda Lindenau and I pointed out that av·ant-garde art was d,eveloped. during the first years ,o f the .revol.ution in the independent or,g anization for cultural workers , Proletkult while Narko.m -

pros . the National People's Commissariat For Enligbtenme·n t had a strict and m,o re traditional attitude, towards a,e sthetics and its role in society. 41 Narkom:pros w·a s l,ed by Anatoly Lunacarsky. The traditionalist style in posters was produced by illustrators and artists who . b,efor,e the r,evolution bad worked with graphic arts and. illustrations-book illustrations. commercial a.dvertising. for publishing comp.anies etc. while the ,avant. .garde (in Eastern European terminology called .F ormalists') .h ad. its c,entre a.m o,n g young painters with intellectual an.d ph.ilosphical ambitions for their art. 42 Ther,e was und.o ubt,edly durin.g this period in Russia a s·t rong connection between avant-gardism and utopian liberalist ·views on culture , while classicism and realism as artistic styles repr,es,ented a 'kind of antipode. It is not a simple operation to ,o utline the points of views and. styles, related. to poli.tical ideolo,gy. Mayakovsky was an avant-gar,d ist but worked under leaders with other vi ews on culture. ROSTA-Win,d ows in avant-garde style had played out thei.r role and became mere m m,o ri.es .. Lenin a serted that 1

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Fig. 11. Only a Close and lndisso/'uble Bo,nd Be,tween Workers and Farmer. Can Sa·ve Ru . ia from Chaos a.nd Hunger. S4x71 cm, three-colour lithogra.phy Mo cow 1920 (B-S 65,S UUB II.a.: I l ).

socialist society and. culture wer,e to be· d.,ev,eloped from th,e bourgeois, culture. Su,ch a stand.point defended for example , th,e traditionalism found in the majority (!,) o,f revolutionary posters. Classicist realism .h ad been predomina.nt in mass,-produc.ed images (book illustrati ons an,d commercial ,art) as,w,ell a:s in fin,e arts before the revolution. But mo,d em times dem,anded n,ew styles of visual ,expression. Lenin a. leader with. ,a particular interest in cultu.re and fine arts supported film-making ,as ,a fo,rm. o,f art. Modernist styles and forms develo,ped within the new m,edium a.nd film posters were created b,y a,dvoca:tes of ideas which lost suppo,rt once the fir t overwhelming rev,olution.ary years w·ere p.ast. 43 As early as 196·0· B,utnik-:Si versky published a c,o,mprehensi'v,e surv,ey or· Soviet poster art: Sov,etsky plakat e,epochi graz.dansk,oj vojny 1918-1921 ( 196,0'). His aim in part. was to attack the views of Western. Europea·n ,a nd American poster art historians on Russian revolutionary poster art . He empb.asiz,ed the lo,ng, R.u.ssian pictorial tradition dat.ing b,ack to the war against Na.poleon. in which ,caricature .and atir,e played an impo,r tant role as did the lubok tradition. 44 He criticized the Ru · ian Formalists the modernist avant-garde , for their lack of resp,ect for the natio,nal traditional 1

cultures ..

T'hat prop.agand.a poster a.rt was given attention in the Soviet Unio,n in th,e I 960s wa . probably a re .ponse to ·w estern interest in Ru , ian a ant-

garde po -t,e r . Bu.tnik-Siver ky ,d efen.ded Social.ist Realism-, u· ing n.ational30

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istic and cultural historical models of explanation. His important contribution has been recognized by Western experts, but has still not been used to the extent that it merits. This may be explained by language barriers and partly by the different ideological standpoints of Eastern and Western historians of art. Socialist Realism had been seen by Westerners as a political, formal strait-jacket that was put on after a few years of revolutionary freedom . When art historians during the 1970s became increasingly interested in mass-produced imagery and its role in society, the situation changed slightly. Illustrative works, such as Michail Guerman's Art ofthe October Revolution ( 1979), found their readers. In The Bolshevik Poster ( 1988) Stephen White presented a well modulated study on the environment in which revolutionary posters were published and how they were received. He also discussed styles and influences. White gave a broad historical account with information on relevant organizations which published posters or exerted influence on poster production. Artists were mentioned by name, including those less known internationally: Zvorykin, Spassky, Kochergin etc.. The Bolshevik Poster is probably the first monograph in English which does not neglect the traditionalist line in Soviet revolutionary poster art. Unfortunately, White took his posters from Western collections only. The collections in the Soviet Union would have been of great value to such an extensive work. It is an even greater pity that Russian works on posters up to this day seem to have been influenced by the choice of posters made by Western authors in their publications on the same subject. This is a reaction of the kind that I mentioned before, namely that a lack of interest was changed only when Western art critics and historians had demonstrated the posters' aesthetic, art historical and cultural value. I.N. Baburina's The Soviet Political Poster 1917-1980 from the USSR Lenin Library Collection ( 1985) includes a large number of posters, some of which Linda Lindenau and I had previously examined. Baburina presented hardly any new material of substance from the collection of 50,000 posters. Thousands of the posters are probably of doubtful technical and aesthetic quality and many have the same illustrations but with the texts in different languages. Baburina mentions herself that about 375.000(!) posters were published during the first years of the revolution. 45 White has pointed out the importance of a satisfactory distribution system. Such factors have been assigned a very limited role in the writing of art history and the history of mass-produced images. A wider scope also brought other facts to light: Posters were regularly reviewed in Pravda, and were often reprinted in Bednota and other journals which were intended for a wide readership in the countryside. Reviews of posters also appeared in a party propaganda journal, Vestnik agitatsii i propagandy, which began to appear in 1920.46

In the discussion that followed, White considered the role of written texts in a mainly illiterate society. In studies on political posters in the Third World, such observations are of utmost interest, but can only create more questions in a context where we lack extensive information on how posters 31

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have been and are received. Even so, parallels may be drawn between l 9thcentury Europe during the development of the Industrial Society, the situation in Russia during the revolutions and Third World societies today.

The Inter-War Period In a number of European countries it has been possible to study the tension between avant-gardism and traditionalism in poster art and propaganda. Posters from the Weimar Republic, for example, have been analysed by, among others, Helmut Rademacher, G. Millier and Ida Katherine Rigby. 47 Kathe Kollwitz's moving drawings from this period-also made into posters-found an international audience that accepted posters as art. Rigby described the inter-war period and its political posters as the decline of avant-gardism in poster propaganda. The Weimar regime pinned its faith on the expressionist artists, and in doing so lost the opportunity to reach the masses: 'Many of the Expressionists' posters seem more a manifestation of the artists' alienation and ''Angst'' than a call for action'. 48 It was a mistake to believe that the public's appreciation of pictures was the same as that of artists and cultural workers. As time went by, the extremists gave up, and a realistic poster propaganda could be seen in the streets. 'Artists returned to their studios', writes Rigby. 49 It is difficult, however, to define Kollwitz as one of those who returned to the studio.

The Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War was also fought in the posters. In The Palette and the Flame. Posters of the Spanish Civil War, ( 1980), John Tisa argued that economic, structural and practical conditions lay behind the positive development of poster art. Tisa cites Luigi Longo, Chairman of the Communist Party of Italy, and Com. General of the International Brigade, 1936-39: It is no accident that, to a great extent, they were produced by the cartoonists and painters of the SBPA, the Spanish Artists' Union, who succeeded in fusing the most vigorous experiments of contemporary art (from expressionism to the constructivism of Soviet artists) with the simplicity and directness that are the tradition of the revolutionary message. 50

The same point was made by White concerning Russian revolutionary poster art, that the artists were professionals and had time and means to work on the posters. Rigby reached a different conclusion, however: that the artists were not capable of meeting the demands of the people. Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1922, Hitler in Germany in 1932 and Franco in Spain in 1940. In these totalitarian political movements, avantgarde as well as traditionalistic, classicist and aestheticizing trends were to be seen. The Futurists in Italy, Expressionists in Germany and Constructivists in the Soviet Union all had a form of elitist view of society, which demanded radical aesthetic forms, whether it was in posters, sculptures or monumental paintings. Meanwhile, tribute was paid to classical ideals. The brutality in modernism and the monumentality in classical ideals formed an alliance, which superseded other styles and propagandistic and aesthetic qualities. 32

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Fig. 12. Whal .Are· You D,oing to· Stop Th.is? 79x56 cm, Mi·nistry of Propaganda Republican Spain ~1936-39. (Source: Tisa ( 1980) p. l 3..) 1

Posters in Nazi Germany Accor,ding to H. A. Basmajiou in 'The Role of the Politic.al Poster in Hi.tier's Rise to Power' in Print ( 1966). posters were used b,y the National 1Socialist,s in order to reach th,o se sections of the population which could not be influ.en,ced in any other way. He supported his thesis o,n the findings of Franz Six and Erwin Schockel: One feature of the poster which was not afforded other forms of pro,paganda was tb.e fact that its prolonged display period.,and its :repetition aU over town and.,country integrated the poster inco the life oft.be passe:r.:by. Franz Six stated tb,at if the viewer tume•d away from one poster · he is alr•eady caught again at the n,ext po ter column. There will be a time when the poster remain in his memory had Schockel observed- the print.e,d. word could remain on.read ,an,d ign.or,ed· th.e radio could be turn ed off· political meetings need n•ol be· attend,ed· ~marching demonstration in pite of th.eir appeal t,o hum.an curiosity, are n,ot necessarily successful . 51 1

The pronounced. interest of the Fascists and Nazis. to reach the b,road mas.ses was se,en as a technica.l matter. 52 Howev,e r the similarities between the pro,paganda techniqu,es of fascism and natio,n al socialism and those of other id.eologie _are astonishing . wheth,e r it be commercial ,o r political propaga.n da poster 1n Europe or today s s,ocialist re·v olutionary pr,opagan,da p,o ters in the T'h ird Wor:ld. And. th.e

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Fig. 13. ,Cabar:et. Polis:h film poster. 84 x 5,8 cm, W. Gorka 1975. (Source: Das polnisch'e Plakat ( m982) ill. no. 3,04;74.)

Fig. 14. Solidarity 8 S x 50 cm ., thr,ee,.colour offset :prin.t, H. Kurkowski?, Poland . 1980-81. (CoJl,ected by O·lle Bjorklund ao.d And,e rs Franze:n 1981.)

aim is the sam,e: to reach as larg,e a se,ct.ion of the population as possible. T'h is was th,e case ·w be·n durin.g World War I Alfred. Leete's/Lord. Kitchen,er''s index finger pointe,d at those who were expected to enlist and. it was the same idea. behind the pointed. finger in Wo,r ld War II when th,e public was asked to support financially and. w'ith their l.ives .. The finger was later

used to adv·ert.ise com.mercial goods .and perio,d.icals.

Poli·sh Poster Art Tw,o co,untries have 'become more well-known than others for their post-wo,r ld-war propaganda posters: Poland. an,d Cuba. A.rtists in the ,e· countries have been. able to develop individual styles they sign the:ir works and th,ey have cr,eate,d a po,sition for themselves in poster and general art

history. C,oncerning Polish po,st,er art the Poster Museum in Wilanow is ,a rich s·ource for studies. Therefore it is an im.portant ,contribution students a,nd teach,ers of Hoch chule der Kun, te in Berl.in. hav,e giv,e n to p,o, ter hi tory in D.a , polni ch,e Plakat von 189.2' bi , heute ( I 98,0). 53 It i a urvey ,o f Poli h 34

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Fig. 15. We .Shall Not Give Away What We Obtained in .August/Solidarity., .21 x30 cm, monochrome offset print Poland 1981. (Co,llected by Asa Nilsson I 9·8 I. )

Fi,g. 16·. Cen ored/Solidarity. 6,1 X43 cm - t.wo-colour silk-creen p,r int So,J idarity .P olan.d l 981. ('Collected by · a - -il .on

and Ander Franz.en. l '98 .I ..)

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poster art since 1892 to contemporary time, mostly based on posters advertising cultural events and with political content (fig. 13). The choice of objects and illustrations for the study was made with regard to aesthetic quality and the national history of art and images. In his study on brick walls as symbolic images in Polish nationalistic propaganda, Anders Aman explained decisive background factors in Poland's political poster tradition. 54 Aman dealt with the symbolism of brick walls, which brought him to examples and styles other than the modernist, abstract compositions which have usually been presented as examples of Polish poster art. When the Solidarity movement grew during the 1980s, poster art and the arts of the street, such as pamphlets, standards and decoration of monuments, were a continuation of similar expressions in earlier decades (fig. 14). This has, according to my knowledge, not yet been studied properly. The Solidarity symbol is one example (fig. 15). The 'masses' marching, striding forward into the blowing wind, and the flags, the red colour are all important classical iconographical elements used in socialist and nationalistic propaganda images. The red colour and the sacrificed blood (fig. 16) became symbols for the people, not the party or the government. The artists of the Solidarity movement lived and worked under conditions which have clearly influenced and strengthened their compositions.

Third World Posters Still very little has been written about Third World poster art, apart from Cuban contributions, although there is good reason to believe that the majority of all political posters produced and distributed since 1970 have been printed and issued there. Studies on Third World posters are almost non-existent in general surveys.

Cuban posters Cuban poster art, however, has met with the same respect from the international public as Polish posters. 55 According to Susan Sontag, Cuban political posters were influenced by the hippie movement and neon advertising in the United States (fig. 17). 56 In other words, they have crossed ideological and political barriers against commercial artistic expression and styles in order to find a new form and style for their leftist-oriented political propaganda. Government-employed artists were given the opportunity to reach a large audience through film poster propaganda and other state-supported cultural activities. The demarcation line between what could be called 'propaganda' and what was 'advertising' and 'art' was consequently vague or non-existent. Sontag did not put Cuban poster art into its Latin American context, despite the fact that the continent has been an important region in the development of politically engaged cultural expressions for the last hundred years. Mexican graphics, Rivera's monumental paintings and mural paintings in Chile done by collectives during the Allende period are some well-known examples. Cuban artists were to some extent mediators and forerunners in Latin 36

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Fig. 17. Ch·e. 'Multicol,o ur print. Design; Rafael Enriquez. Cuba 1·982 .•

American ,contemporary political arts but the conti.nent has als·O fun,ctio,ned. as the United :States b·.acky.a.rd. for many decades. 57 Commer,cial adv,ertising. cartoons .and tele·vision programmes have more or less b,een forced on the peop,Ie and Latin. American mass cul tu.re has developed styles and ico,no,gr.aphy similar to, those formed. in the United States. Thes•e have. it must ·b,e noted also be·en u.sed agai.nst capitalis.m a.nd over-consumption. Examples of ma.ss culture and politi,cal mural paintings can also be found among Latin Americans in exile a.n d Latin. American .migrants in the United States and other •co·untries . Language and cultu.re united modem Latin American populations with the mainstream ,o f Spa.nish and Portuguese history as w,ell as with the form,e r P·ortugues.e coloni,es in Africa . Third World. education .and de·velopment programmes ha.v,e used th,e , xperienc,es from .m odern Latin. American mass culture and its find.ings on how to reach. the broad masses. Th,e use of cartoons fb,r exam.pie is :h.ighly developed in S,panish- and Portuguese-speaking areas o·f the world .. Wheth•er this is a 'N orth American influence or a genuine Latin American ,cultural ,expression is a ,question le·ft to be answered and •c annot be given full ,consideration here. It is important however . to point out that mod "m publications and mass culture in th 'T hird World a a whole hav·e g.ain d from several tra,dit1on Whethe·r th y ar, een a . coming fr,om old Europe-

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an visual imagery or if they are modem depends on the point of view chosen by the interpreter.

Chinese posters Political poster propaganda in Asia has attracted little attention amongst authors on poster art. In Stewart Frazer's 100 Great Chinese Posters, 1977, the posters were produced over a span of about three decades, which is a long period in Chinese poster history. Moreover, the author did not make any closer iconographical or other study of the images or their history. Frazer did not make any attempt to discuss the points of departure for Chinese Socialist Realism. The Chinese peasant popular arts are to be considered today as a main iconographic and stylistic tradition, which meets political symbolic language in propaganda art. There has also been a strong influence from Stalinist Socialist Realism. Chinese poster art and propaganda arts have, however, found their own style, but have given little room for individual artistic characterization, and as a result art historians have lost interest. Monumental and mural paintings appear to be more interesting media to study and perhaps this is the point: that poster art in socialist China is no longer flourishing. Frazer suggested that the literacy campaigns did not diminish poster production-a statement which hardly surprises the student of images and mass media, but shows clearly under what circumstances the study of arts, images and mass media is conducted to date. 58 That images and symbols first and foremost function as substitutes for the written word is sadly enough a misinterpretation of the human mind as well as of modem society. It limits considerably the possibilities to see and understand today's world.

African posters Little has been written on African poster art. Julie Fredrikse's None But Ourselves. Masses Vs. Media in the Making of Zimbabwe (1982), is worth special mention, although posters are only one source out of many in her study. With the use of an overwhelming flood of written documents, photographs, pictures, pamphlets, T- shirts, posters, pin-buttons, archival material, etc., the author wrote a history of the freedom struggle in Zimbabwe. As a journalist, she depended heavily on the archives of daily newspapers and magazines and on interviews and official statements. Naturally it is not aesthetic or technical qualities that have influenced her choice of material for consideration. Pungwes, nightly political meetings held by the guerillas, were probably of greater importance than many propaganda media in Zimbabwe. 59 Such findings are invaluable for future communication studies and especially for a critical analysis of the role of mass-produced visual imagery. Photographic images and drawings were more common than other propaganda pictures in Zimbabwe. Not many picture posters were published, while written propaganda often appeared. This was dealt with in my article on photography as a political and didactic instrument in three African states'. 60 38

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Fig. 18. Anniversary of the October· Revolutio·n!Lenin and Neto Have .t·he· Same Objective: Socialtsm . Three~lour •offset p•riot 1978-79. (Source·: Africa Groups Uppsala1, Sweden.)

lt is evid.e nt th.a t po,s ter art which became an important propaganda medium in Mozambique was not at all a.s prevalent in Southern Rhodesia , although a close cultural , :politi,cal. and military conta.ct existed over the border . The history is also too C•omplicated for an investigation here of the relationship b,etween tr.a,dition.al s.b,o,na and Nde·bele cultural expression and modem visual imagery and p,ublish·ed written ·propag.a n,da. Fredrikse's and my findings concerning Zimbabw•e in comparison with Moza.m bican an.d. Ethiopian propaganda and visual imag.ery , in,dicate that the Third World can in no wa.y be se;en as one m.ass-media .a.rea wiith similar receptive. .

ness for visual imagery . An article· on Angolan MPLA-posters was presented by the author in. 1'981 based on material fr,om the Africa Gro,u p,s in Sweden and archival sources ·from th.e ,CJD:A C Institute in Lisb,on. Portugal. 61 It was later published in a. sbo,r ter version in the Scandinavian Institute of African Stu.dies periodical Nytt frdn Afrikainstitutet.. 62 The use of few but well-d,efined symbols base·d on intemationa] socialist iconography an.d modern Angolan national s.y mbolism wa·s found to give rise to a flow of ,c reative poster compositions over the initial years of Angolan ind,epend.ence (fig . .18) .

Ca.t.d/ogo·dos Cartazes de M o~amb.iquelCatalogue ofMo·zambican Po·ster:s (1988) was published by the Historical Archives in Map,u to. B•e hind lies th,e docum,entary work carried out by Antonio Sopa and myself in l 985-86. This annotated. catalogu.e contains m ost of the post-1nd,ependence posters as well as posters iss·ued by the liberation mo,ve·me:nts durin,g the l 960s Postets fo·u nd and published in the catalogue after mid-19,86 were added without my assi.stance . A short account on Mozambican po, ter . wa· giv n by the same authors in Mor;amb'ique (1987 . Swedi h editio•n) an.d Mo am1

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bique ( 1988, English edition), published for the Mozambique exhibition held in Stockholm, Sweden. The German periodicals Tendenzen, Kunst und Unterricht and Bildende Kunst enriched the studies of political imagery and mass-produced pictures for several years during the 1970s. Articles from these periodicals are therefore referred to here to some extent, although nothing on Ethiopian and Mozambican poster art has been published.

Paris 1968 The student and youth revolt in Paris in 1968, which later spread to other parts of the world, was a catharsis which did not develop as far as many had hoped or feared, but still left a strong impact on politics and especially on popular support for the Third World. This is said despite the fact that contents from posters made in Paris 1968 and on college campuses around the Western world did not deal with Third World issues. The posters produced at Atelier Popu/aire, which today are given full credit for their propagandistic and aesthetic quality in literature on poster history, were made by a collective of students and teachers of art in Paris. The technical handicap was, as in Cuba and later by the Solidarity movement in Poland, turned into an asset-template and silk screen printing were used in all their simplicity and perfection. Unfortunately there are few studies on propaganda art of youth and solidarity movements. Two published works on Paris 1968 can be mentioned here: Posters from the Revolution. Paris, May (1968) and L.I. Peters'

Kunst unter Revolte: Das po/itische Plakat und der Aufstand der franzosichen Studenten ( 1988).

Posters Seen as a Form of Mass-Produced Images Attention given to mass-produced images during the 1970s was a vital contribution to the history of art. In Sweden, the discipline of art history was renamed Konstvetenskap (Kunstwissenschaft in German) as a result of the shift of perspective. The bulk of source material was increased and the study of replicas and reproductions and popular versions of well-known images and compositions were given more emphasis than before, as well as the milieu in which these were produced. Interest in the communicative perspectives of images grew. Careful studies of the iconography and iconology of images had earlier been developed by Erwin Panofsky and Ernst Gombrich with due consideration given to composition and message, artist and purchaser and the ideological background in which the artefacts were created. The same iconological and iconographical systems were now used on a wider material, also seen from the public point of view. The greater range of source material also demanded ethnological, sociological and anthropological perspectives to be considered. The interdisciplinary debate was nourished by socio-historical and psychological perspectives and also by ideas introduced from the ideologically active leftist movements which had penetrated the academic world during the 1960s and 1970s. The 40

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growing importance of art and picture media and their development and growth in the industrial society became a central area of study. The poster medium has been studied for the last one hundred years. Poster art has been seen as a specific artistic and communicative medium, in which one could follow stylistic streams as in the original fine arts. Lena Johannesson pointed out in Den massproducerade bi/den ( 1978) (The MassProduced Picture) that the interest for posters had depended on established artists' works. 63 She argued that the role of the poster was over-emphasized compared with, for example, commercial advertising and trademarks, which have been widespread in Europe and the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. According to Johannesson, fair recognition had not been given to typographical posters and the written message in the poster. Authors had failed to distinguish between the various forms of media, as, for example, between posters and magazine covers, and they had failed to define what a poster really is. Information on size, printing technique, distribution and audience was often non-existent or unacceptable. She also argued that the history of the propaganda poster was unluckily mixed with the history of commercial posters. 64 With a socio-ethnological perspective and analysis of the function of images and compositions, she defended and analysed pictures which were meant for or used by the 'people': illustrated magazines with woodcuts, bookmarks, illustrations in mail-order catalogues with a wide circulation, etc.. The trademark law of the 19th century and the establishment of the international union, L 'union internationale pour la protection de la propriete industrielle, from 1884 had, according to Johannesson, been crucial milestones. 65 The flood of pictures through widespread advertising was then systematized. The role mass-produced pictures played by constantly reappearing in everyday life in people's immediate environment, and the never-ending development of its iconography, provided advertisements with an immense impact on their audience. She argued that despite the new physical form (i.e. larger size) in which the message was delivered, old conventions from other types of mass-produced pictures still influenced poster art.

The Language of Images Since the number of symbols, motifs and messages is rather limited, yet central in political posters, it can be quite useful to see them in a context where pictorial elements are referred to as 'syllables', 'words' and 'sentences', similar to the way in which a language is built up and formed according to rules, its 'grammar'. The compositional units can have 'inner' and 'outer' contexts and can be dealt with both in sections and as complete entities. In one way, this project has gained from a 'semiotic approach', since it further strengthens the idea of a combined historical and symbolic/emblematic development within political propaganda. There is certainly an international language of style, form and symbols in political posters, but the language has a dialect in many parts of the Third World, and is sometimes not understood at all. Jack Goody, Nelson Goodman and other linguists and language experts have defined societies as 'oral' and 'literate'. 66 To 41

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some extent it is meaningful to define societies in a similar manner concerning the comprehension of two-dimensional images, but that goes beyond the aims of this study. However, it does leave us with interesting questions on a more general level concerning different cultures' readiness to incorporate contemporary mass media. Ethiopian culture has a written history and a living tradition, where the written word as well as the two-dimensional picture play important roles. The dominating culture is literate, but the majority of the people cannot read and write. In Mozambique, the main cultures can be characterized as 'oral', while the population is 'illiterate'. Urban Mozambicans have been exposed to political posters for a long time. The Portuguese security police issued picture posters as well as pamphlets, decals, flyers and stickers as late as in 1974. Despite the 'oral' culture in which most Mozambicans live, the use of two-dimensional propaganda pictures has been more common than in Ethiopia, where the style as well as the content and choice of medium are new. Knowledge of central areas of traditional culture, of urban society in the two countries and of existing mass-media structure is necessary to detect rules in the local 'grammar' of political propaganda in each cultural context. The findings of this project can hopefully be of some help in future studies of 'oral', 'literate' and 'illiterate' societies in the Third World, and their confrontation with and development towards modem mass-media societies. 67

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CHAPTER III

Theory, Sources, and Methods 'New' Pictures in 'New' Countries. Theoretical Problems and Practical Answers In order to study Third World political posters it is necessary to explain the function of mass-produced images and their cultural and developmental role. In the struggle against colonialism, desires to define new aspects of national culture and identity were expressed. During the 1950s and 1960s, the idea of negritude had been developed in Francophone Africa by, among others, the former President of Senegal, Leopold Senghor. It was followed by the Black Power movement in the United States, which was to give considerable moral support to Africans on the African continent as well. But in the l 970s this was no longer an issue in Southern Africa or in the African international cultural debate. The issue of cultural imperialism and the role of Western culture and oppression in Africa also faded after Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). There was a need for national unity more than African cultural identity among the politically aware, whose Western-based philosophy and political milieu came to be the natural foundation for the new African political and intellectual ideas. Politicians and cultural workers did, however, publish several documents declaring the aims and goals of culture in the new state. 1 But universities were emptied in order to fill the chairs in governments and national administrations, and poets, painters and other artists also took active part in the making of the new government structure and national administration, which gave them little time for deeper discussions and cultural activities. Internal enemies, political inexperience, serious problems that had to be solved immediately were constantly impinging on other equally important issues such as the quest for cultural identity. National identity was, however, more important than ever before and was expressed, for example, in poetry, rhetorics, picture propaganda and dance. In Ethiopia, the Institute for the Study of Ethiopian Nationalities was organized, but little was done concerning support for Ethiopian propaganda artists and cultural workers. Posters on national identity, national liberation and national pride were to be seen in the newly liberated states. African propaganda pictures were now produced in the independent states of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe in the form which Western solidarity organizations and the Western public had seen during the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. They were obviously African in the sense that they were made in Africa by artists living in Africa, but there was also a strong connection between the styles of the African political posters and posters from leftist political parties and solidarity groups in Europe and the Ameri43 Digitized by

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cas. This could be seen either as an expression of cultural and political oppression imposed by new African socialist elites, or, seen from a more optimistic point of view, as modern mass media promoting national identity and contemporary urban African culture. In the Portuguese colonies, the African public had been deprived of its rights and the knowledge of its cultural background for centuries. But Portuguese colonial culture was also one important period in the history of Mozambique, as Belgian influence was in Zaire and British in Zimbabwe, which could not be forgotten or erased completely. It was during colonial times that Africa was introduced to the Western politics and philosophy that were now foundations for the independent states. The problem of how to view modern mass-produced pictures is emphasized here in order to bring up questions on African authenticity, an issue often raised when dealing with African arts and culture. It is important to see how such questions can be formulated from several points of departure and with varying results. The new situation created by the liberation movements demanded redefinitions and new descriptions of cultural identity. Urban society and national identity were to be put in a context where traditional African culture, colonial experience and recent historical events were given due consideration.

The Problem of African Socialism and Socialist Iconography Third World politics have changed the concepts of socialism since the economic policies of Eastern Europe have not been found useful. The need for a middle class and small business was clear to most African leaders soon after national independence. Socialism developed early into an African form in Tanzania, Ujamaa. In Zimbabwe the one-party system was seen by President Robert Mugabe as a traditional African social and political organization rather than an undemocratic but uniting political system during historical periods of unrest. Considering that one of the central themes-socialism-is now undergoing drastic reinterpretation, it is relevant to ask whether it will affect the political posters, and if so in what way and to what extent. Socialism has been represented, for example, by modern tractors on big fields, or by beautifully created views of industrial areas with masses of workers: how would the image change in Africa, where family farms and firms on a small scale are seen as the base for national development under socialist rule? The question is whether national culture and tradition are more important than international socialist tradition and how colonial traditions, old African aesthetics and individual modern artists can form the new posters. To what extent is the poster today a natural medium in Africa? Such questions have become increasingly important during 1989-90, when socialist countries, one by one, are undergoing reforms, and market economies and multi-party parliamentary political systems are being formed. 44

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Socialist iconography and socialist propaganda are used in the thesis as concepts for discussions based on a limited and short-term perspective, i.e. from the beginning of the struggle for independence until the national governments eventually renounce socialism. The latter did not occur during the period when posters were collected. A vocabulary for the study of political posters in a long- term perspective remains to be developed, although traditional art history methods and theories have confronted the issue. It is still, however, the art historian's problem of how to relate imagery to political and social realities. There is always a risk involved when we depoliticize our scientific language and our area of study and find ourselves isolated in studies of style and form. On the other hand, research findings are misused if judgements of political theories or their practical implementation are based solely on cultural expres• s1ons.

Aim and Scope The character of the audience affects the role political posters can play in independent Africa. This observation was made in Mozambique in 1978, when sociologists from Communicaqiio Soqiais presented a study on visual communication among inhabitants in three villages, one in Capo Delgado, one in Nampula and one in the Gaza district. 2 Political posters from the Mozambican Ministry of Information were misunderstood or were not understood at all by the villagers, according to the report. Mozambicans who had contact with urban life could understand the posters better than others. Photographic pictures and film were most appreciated. The conclusion drawn by the workers in Communicaqiio Soqiais was that photography, film and oral mass communication should be more used. Posters still continued to be produced with the intention of reaching the 'Mozambican working class'. 3 Yet in my discussions with the director of DNPP, Josee Freire, it was made clear that the government and Ministry of Information fully understood that the Mozambican working class was a very small part of the population. To my knowledge there was not even an attempt to decrease or minimize poster printing. However, the role of radio communication and film was considered and these media have been supported by the government and development aid organizations. The use of posters and propaganda pictures in Ethiopia has not, as far as I know, been studied as in Mozambique. There is, on the whole, little interest in poster art in Ethiopia. Picture materials from the Literacy Campaign headquarters in Addis Ababa showed, for example, that a propaganda poster from the Russian Revolution was used without regard to the poster's origin. The Russian farmer in a well-known poster from 1920 (fig. 19) was given Ethiopian characteristics and was mass-produced during the imperial era (fig. 20). The artist who made it into the Literacy Campaign symbol did not, to my knowledge, inform the employees at the headquarters about the origin. Ethiopian highland culture is known for its rich tradition in manuscript illustration and church decoration and it is not, on the other hand, surprising to see how an allegorical composition such as this has been recognized and used. The connection between the image and the text is also 45

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.Fig. 2,0 a. Illiteracy Is a Journey in Darkness. We Shall ,Campaign Against It. 25 x 35 cm black--and-white offset print (Archives. o:f Literacy Campai.gn Headquart,ers Addis .Ababa I 984).

Fig. 20 b. To Lift the Curtain of Ignorance/Let the Educat,ed Teach, the Uneducated Learn! 99X61' cm. two-colour o•ffset. print, ,Serto Ader. Berhane~ na ;Selam Printin,g,Pr,ess,. Addis Ab.ab·a ,Ethiopia (Source: COPWE Headquarters Addis Ab,a ba 19.84.)

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characteristic for Ethiopian tradition sin,ce proverbs and ·wis•e :sayings h.ave an important pla.ce in the national culture. The la.ck of interest for the origin ,o f the picture eve.n amona the leaders at the hea.dqu.arters is there~ fore :r.atber surp,rising. Whether posters .and symbols ar,e generally understood by Ethio,pians without experience of two-dimensional pictures is unkn,own. Thos•e wh,o can understand both images. and texts can .however number more , than their counterparts in Moza.mb1que since two-dimension.al. pictures normal. . ly occur in the traditional Ethiopian highlan.d cultur,e. In Mozambique, political posters have been ma,de with more ,care than non-political information posters. The case is ,almost the opposite in Ethiopia. s.uch findings promote questions c,o n,c ernin,g the relationships between c,oncepts such as .art culture propaganda and politics in the two countries and the governments, understanding of the role of post,er ,a rt in th.e revolution and the socialist society. i

1

Choice of Research Ar·e.a and S,o urce Material lt is not difficult to see the similarities between th,e propaganda. from tb,e Soviet Union .and othe·r East European countries and tb,e material fr,om Angola. Mozambiqu,e. Zimbab·we a.nd Ethiopia., But differences are als,o obvious. To make a comparis.o n of symbols and .rev·,olutionary i,conography between Africa' and. Europe would be to limit the possibilities ,o f the .ource material. But it has to be pointed out ,clearly that poster with

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political messages have been printed most often in times of unrest and during revolutions and wars. It is for this reason that political posters have become connected with socialism and communism, ideologies which defend revolutionary change. Such is the case in Africa, too. The political poster art in evidence ten years after independence in Ethiopia and Mozambique-the time when I first saw the propaganda in its own environment-was certainly related to an internationally well-k.nown visual language. But it struck me from the very beginning how different the Ethiopian poster was from its Mozambican counterpart. The choice of research area and material had little to do with what I considered more or less interesting compared with propaganda art of other regions. For instance, the situation of visual imagery and its impact in Zimbabwe was very complicated since the differences between regions also reflected dividing lines between political and cultural regions. It affected the way in which printed material was used by ZANU and ZAPU, two major liberation movements and later parties in free Zimbabwe. Lack of time was unfortunately a decisive factor when deciding not to include Zimbabwean material in this study. To choose Ethiopia and Mozambique as special areas of interest in the dissertation was to make the most of organizational and personal contacts which already existed. Moreover, the two countries complement each other in this project because of their cultural and historical differences. These were the two main reasons for their selection. Historically and culturally, Ethiopia and Mozambique can be seen as two poles. Ethiopia is the only state in Africa which has not been under colonial rule for a long period, while Mozambique was conquered and then governed by Portugal for half a millennium. In Ethiopia there exists a strong tradition of two-dimensional pictures in Christian highland culture; the Mozambican people express themselves in other for111s of art. Mozambique became independent after decades of a guerilla warfare which had been actively supported by politically conscious countrymen, whereas when Ethiopian soldiers staged a coup in 1974 against the Emperor Haile Selassie, there was no popular, organized support for the coup. A legal obligation to collect copies of published documents or printed matter in Ethiopia and Mozambique has not been possible to enforce in years of instability. During the 1980s, however, more interest was given to this issue after such material became appreciated as historical documents and as a result of the search for national identity and revolutionary history. In Ethiopia there is still, to my knowledge, no library or national archive with the obligation to collect copies of everything printed in the country. In 1984, during my visit to the Artistic Printing Press in Addis Ababa, this issue was discussed. Shortly before, the provisional military government had issued a request to organizations and government offices on national, regional and local levels, that they collect two copies of every published item and other documents in their hands. The administrations and printing works had not started to collect material in accordance with the directives of the authorities, but were considering doing so. Firstly, it was not made clear whether printing houses should have this responsibility or if it was only political organizations and distributors of information that were con47

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cemed. Secondly, there was no space available for storage. National and regional organizations had started to save their papers in 1984, but none seems to have done so comprehensively. Political posters studied in this project were most often printed during the period 1974-86. The Mozambican posters which Antonio Sopa and I catalogued in the Historical Archives of Mozambique in Maputo contained a large proportion of theatre and film posters and posters from other special events. Within the Mozambican source material the distinction between political and non-political posters is actually difficult to make. I have chosen to disregard most of the posters for cultural events, if they have no obvious propagandistic-political mission. However, the source material as such, including all posters collected in the Historical Archives, has greatly widened my perspective on and knowledge of poster art. The collection of Ethiopian posters for this research project is smaller. This is mainly due to the fact that posters have not been as common in Ethiopia as in Mozambique. It is, however, difficult to say how much the differences in size of collected material from the two countries reflect the size of production of posters and the size of editions. It has not been possible to discuss the size of editions in Ethiopia and it has been difficult to collect information on numbers of copies printed. However, all such information available to me accompanies the given illustrations below. In Ethiopia, the poster medium is not a very important medium for forms of messages other than political propaganda. Ethiopian cultural events are advertised by mural paintings and monumental textile paintings in the streets. In an iconographical study this is no reason to neglect the advertising of cultural events when studying Ethiopian and Mozambican posters. Ethiopian propaganda for cultural events is the refore dealt with to some extent, without regard to technique and medium, and depending mainly on the opportunities for me to document such pictures. · Mozambican archival personnel have taken a very special, personal interest in collecting poster art. I have reason to believe that collections have also been saved in Ethiopia, but without any governmental guidance. On account of the political unrest it will take some time before we have a knowledge of what and how much propaganda material is actually saved from the first hectic decade of the Dergue's rule. On several occasions it was because of private initiatives taken by civil servants in Mozambique and Ethiopia that my collection grew fast and considerably. People at the Ethiopian Ministry of National Guidance and Information had collected posters which had been produced by them. Many posters were collected at the Artistic Printing Press. I was asked to come and take a copy of each before the posters were delivered to those who had ordered them. In Mozambique the awareness of the need for visual propaganda and visual comprehension and the views that poster images had artistic qualities, were reasons for the authorities to save posters. I was rather a collector of collections and one in a small team who were entrusted to organize the collection of posters at the Historical Archives in Maputo. In Mozambique about 680 posters were collected, photographed and catalogued by 1986. 130 were colonial propaganda posters, 151 posters of the remaining 550 were classified as posters for cultural events, including 48

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posters for theatre, film, art exhibitions, music events, dances, etc.. 4 Many posters in the cultural events category have obvious political propagandistic value. It has not seemed relevant, however, to make a judgement in the case of each poster. A comparable group within the Ethiopian material does not exist, nor would problems concerning categorization make it possible for a further analysis of the sub-categories. 118 Ethiopian posters were documented. The Ethiopian material is composed entirely of political posters with the exception of 10 posters from the Literacy Campaign headquarters and three posters/post cards for the 100th anniversary of the city of Addis Ababa. The posters were produced over a span of about 15 years-1976-1989. Material collected and photographed up to 1986 in Mozambique and 1987 in Ethiopia is also copied and available as slides in the Historical Archives in Maputo and the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts.

The Winner's Propaganda Both Ethiopian and Mozambican posters in this study are the winner's propaganda, i.e. the propaganda of political movements and governments now in power. It would therefore not have been a bad idea to complement the Ethiopian posters with Eritrean EPLF and ELF material and give an even more interesting picture of the iconographical development in this part of the Hom of Africa. However, the history of the EPLF and ELF would also have to be considered and the task would then become too great. The South Africa-supported guerilla movement RNM's and South Africa's political propaganda would also provide interesting comparative projections for the Mozambican material, but again, time limits and practical reasons made me use material from other organizations and groups only as examples, to throw light on certain motives or aspects of the main source material. To concentrate on two large but well-defined categories of African political posters gave me both options: to compare and to draw general conclusions. This is in no way to declare other sources of other organizations' material less important or less interesting, but that the material as it stands now is sufficient for the objectives of this limited study. Mozambique The study is mainly built on poster production from the Ministry of Information. Posters from the Eduardo Mondlane University, the Ministry of Culture and small cultural institutions are also included, as are certain posters published by the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education actually has considerable archives, also containing posters. These collections will probably be of great significance in studies on visual comprehension and what is communicated to the people in the changing Mozambican society. However, after considering the time limits, I decided to leave these posters aside, although some of them are commented on below, since they were either easily collected, had already been placed in the Historical Archives or were interesting as comparative material to the political posters.

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The large majority of political posters have been produced by the National Propaganda and Publication Department within the Ministry of Information, DNPP. Posters, logotypes, conference symbols, and so on, for the national mass organizations have also been fortned or given a last touch by the head of the department. Primary sources were easier to find than secondary on Mozambican propaganda art. Articles, political documents and speeches delivered by national leaders furnished the background material on which the study of posters could be made. Cultural policies in Mozambique have a clear profile which puts politics into culture as a natural but still not indispensable factor. Culture with a capital C has been formed to support national identity and to continually express political changes. Information documents and propaganda from the time of the liberation struggle and later in the FRELIMO congresses are easily available. Most of this material collected in Mozambique was brought to my attention by Ant6nio Sopa and Professor Albie Sachs.

Ethiopia The Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts, with the assistance of its principal, Abdu Rahman Sherif, and dedicated teachers, offered information and source materials which came to be qualitatively the most important and which formed the bulk of my collection of slide pictures of posters for this study. For several years the school was the main institution for poster propaganda delivered to the state and its institutions. They also presented a collection of large paintings from their classes, in which the motifs were purely propagandistic but created from imagined slogans and themes given by the teachers. During my visits to Ethiopia I was allowed access to posters and prints which were in immediate use by party headquarters, Revolutionary Ethiopian Youth Association, REYA, the headquarters of Revolutionary Ethiopian Women's Association, REWA, and the Office of Ethiopian Peace, Solidarity and Friendship Committee, EPSFC. I was also given the opportunity to collect copies of posters from the Artistic Printers in Addis Ababa, one of Ethiopia's three most well-equipped printing houses. The Ministry of National Guidance and Information contributed with a collection of duplicates of their own posters and posters from other ministries and organizations which had been gathered in the archives of the ministry. Visits were made to the Institute of the Studies of Ethiopian Nationalities, the Ministry of Culture and the headquarters of the National Literacy Campaign. The Literacy Campaign has an exceptional archive of educational material, publications, original paintings, and prints, which were used in the literacy campaigns. I studied parts of the archives with the purpose of getting additional background and comparative material to political posters. At the Ministry of Culture, I was allowed to view a slide collection of pictures of large propaganda paintings made during a critical period of the Ethiopian revolution. I did not, however, have access to the slides or photographic copies later in order to analyse the material further. Little attention has been paid to printed posters in Ethiopia in published literature or political documents. To my knowledge, no printed documents 50

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concerning posters have been published by the government. Documents on culture and speeches on such issues as cultural identity, national identity and the role of arts are the closest one can get to official statements on propaganda arts, and they have not provided any considerable information on political propaganda. Contributions to the study of traditional Ethiopian symbolism have been made by, among others, Stanley Chojnacki, Sylvia Pankhurst, Richard Pankhurst, and Bernhard Lindahl, and can also be useful in the search for background information. 5 Unpublished works by Seyom Wolde and discussions with him on his findings during my stays in Addis Ababa have provided additional background material. Information on stamps has been collected from the Postal Museum, Addis Ababa Central Post Office and T. G. Michaelidis' Ethiopian Stamp Catalogue. The Swedish philatelist Ivan Adler has contributed to public knowledge of Ethiopian stamp history, which I have gained mainly from Tenastelin, a periodical published by the Swedish-Ethiopian Society in Sweden.6 Meetings with artists, administrators and government representatives have given additional infor111ation on background history, procedures for ordering posters and other propaganda material, such as employment conditions for government-employed artists. Information has been given by personnel at institutes, the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts, ministries and the COPWE headquarters, which has also been a significant aid in understanding the situation. The lack of factual information is obvious, however. This may be explained by the general view that propaganda posters are not considered to be art. The posters have neither been appreciated nor saved. During my first visit to Ethiopia in 1984, I was introduced to the Ethiopian authorities. I was given considerable time for discussions on political matters at the COPWE headquarters and with leaders and members of mass organizations. I was put in contact with Addis Ababa U niversity, its Department of History and the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. Since no art history is taught outside of the art school and no research is being conducted on contemporary arts at the university, I turned to the headquarters of the Ethiopian Peace, Solidarity and Friendship Committee (EPSFC). There, with the help of the committee, I was able to form constructive contacts with organizations of a political, administrative and academic nature. The personnel of the Solidarity Committee were of importance for the result of the project on all three visits to Ethiopia: in 1984, 1987 and 1988-89. Contacts with the authorities were made with the assistance of the same committee and, in a couple of cases, through employees at the Swedish Embassy in Addis Ababa/SIDA Office.

Methods of Analysis and Presentation of Results Considerable attention has been paid to the analysis of form, style and content of posters, in relation to known social, political and historical contexts. This is the basis of my research. Several posters are presented 51

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below on the basis of findings made during such detailed studies. Posters which received more attention initially were those which were printed in several editions and were widely circulated in Mozambique-i.e. posters which came to me at an early stage in Sweden and subsequently in Mozambique. I was not familiar with Ethiopian posters before my visit to Addis Ababa in 1984, but once there, and parallel to the intensive task of collecting posters, I spent considerable time studying each separate poster in order to acquire relevant additional data on the material. This was facilitated by the assistance of several persons working at the EPSFC. At a later stage, about 50 Ethiopian and Mozambican posters of different character were analysed in a scheme where figures, pictorial elements, colours, volumes and the structure of the symbolic content were compared. Frequently occurring elements, such as soldiers, the five-pointed star, women, the hammer and sickle, and flags, were noted. The method of placing data on pictorial elements into a simple statistical figure was not new to me. Linda Lindenau and I had used it in our research on Russian posters with a similar result: It was relevant for finding out more about compositions dealing with a limited choice of formal and symbolic elements, but it was less useful as a categorization of posters according to content. This method of analysis was useful in another way, however, in that I became more aware of the separate elements. After several years it became evident that a categorization should be based on three factors-on time, technique and rate of symbolic elements. These three factors were decisive in the development of political posters in the two countries, but they were not constant from one poster to another. In addition, the cultural context and the educational level of the viewers were significant factors to be taken into account when explaining the history of the poster. However, the cultural context was more or less constant during the short period of time and it was therefore not necessary to emphasise it with regard to specific changes in poster production. Educational level and other factors concerning the viewer and his or her comprehension of propaganda have been left for future studies. The use of photography was fairly common at an early stage, but the technique became more popular in subsequent years and was executed with increasing finesse. A whole chapter has been devoted to posters with photographic elements in order to discuss the role of the technique thoroughly. The typographical poster is a special case in the history of political posters. In our analysis of Russian material, Linda Lindenau and I found it likely that typographical posters were used especially during periods of extreme political crisis. Our unpublished findings on, for example, Leon Trotsky's messages to the public in Petrograd, could be supported if posters with mainly written propaganda were found in Ethiopia and Mozambique from similarly critical periods. However, this category of posters has not always been considered by collectors. In the chapter on typographical posters this discussion is further developed in connection with the question of colour symbolism. With the exception of posters dealt with in Chapter VII, the categorization coincides to a large extent with Martin Oeppner's and Jilrgen Meyer's

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article 'Uberlegungen zum fortschrittlichen Plakatschaffen' in Tendenzen ( 1976), where German political propaganda posters are treated under subtitles such as 'Schriftplakate', 'Fotomontage und Plakat', and 'Zeichnung und Karikatur im Plakat'. 7 My categorization is, however, built independently on findings related to Russian revolutionary posters and later to the Mozambican and Ethiopian material. Frank Kampfer's typology in Der rote Keil (1985) is also similar, but connected to other types of analysis. The chapter on symbols and emblematic compositions deals with posters produced with different techniques, and these have been studied with regard to their content of elements with symbolic value. National political symbolsm of this kind is also found in strictly emblematic compositions, such as national and organizational emblems and logotypes, badges, and emblematic compositions on buildings. Contacts with artists, politicians, government employees and others who have provided valuable information have taken place in the form of discussions. Therefore, formal records of interviews are not available. The author's findings and collection of data are presented directly in the thesis. Only in exceptional cases have biographies of artists been written down for use here. The time spent on the collection of posters and their documentation allowed only limited opportunity for the search for the information, which was made even more difficult by the fact that it was not always possible to attribute signatures to an individual artist. At times names were available, but it was impossible to contact the artists. Altogether I met eight Mozambican artists with whom I discussed poster art and their own contributions. I met eleven Ethiopian artists who had contributed in one way or another, five of whom I only talked to briefly during my visits to the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts. Their names are given when my information is drawn directly from their statements. Since my role as a researcher was not clear at all times (some were chance meetings) I find it relevant not to name the individual artists unless they have given the permission to do so or if they were aware of my purpose in speaking to them.

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CHAPTER IV

Drawings and Other Monochrome Illustrations Mozambique Early FRELIMO drawings• The poster In the enemy zone - oppression/in FRELIMO's zone-liberty (fig. 21) vividly illustrates Portuguese oppression during the time when FRELIMO developed its armed struggle and had become a real threat to the colonial regime. It depicts the ideal society which FRELIMO fought to create, and actually had created in some liberated areas of the country. The upper half of this didactic composition represents 'the enemy zone'. It is a depressing scene of a badly planned and constructed area. The site is quite empty, with the exception of huts built in two unimaginative rows, set near a barbed wire fence. This is one of the despised 'security villages' which the Portuguese colonial regime organized for the inhabitants in sensitive areas of the country in order to control them and isolate them from guerilla incursions or the activities of the local freedom fighters. One house is depicted in European style. Steps lead up to the door. The -house is drawn by an artist with limited experience of three-dimensional volume in Western style, i.e. through the use of the central perspective formula. A uniformed man in the foreground is brandishing his chicote at five pinioned Mozambicans. The chicote is a whip, well known to the people of Southern Africa. Another uniformed man is holding a palmatoria, a wooden club with holes. The palmatdria is also an instrument of torture, designed to raise weals. The Mozambicans are fettered with chains or ropes. The first in the line is a woman with her baby on her back. She carries it in a traditional cotton cloth, a capulana, commonly used by Mozambican women. Two Portuguese men are seated. The beard-stubble and the red faces-the colour was printed onto later editions of the poster-give us a notion of their rough and uncivilized manners. One of them is shaking his fist at the Mozambicans. Cartoon-style signals for movement are around him, and stars-signs of anger or aggressiveness-revolve over his head. His hat is placed on the table. He sits arrogantly with legs crossed, dressed in walking shoes-the others are wearing boots-and he is more heavily built than his Portuguese colleague. Note also the African officer's shorts and the long trousers of the two Portuguese. These visual signals of social structure in colonial society, tradition and background inform us that the big man is a leading figure. (The use of long trousers among Africans has become a sign of dignity in some post-colonial societies.) The lower half of the composition represents a paradise compared with 54

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NA ZONA DO INIM/G,O.~ CIPR

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life under colonial rule. The fertile environment embraces buildings and people. Women are busy with their daily duties, grinding seed, carrying water and transporting wood on their heads. Children and grown-ups are going to the school, which is situated in the centre of the village. Some inhabitants are on their way to the cooperative shop. Other posters with the same didactic idea, created by the same artist, are made with an even stronger connection to comic book style. Hand-written text interlinks with the picture, and signs for speed and sounds as well as typical cartoon-like exaggeration lead to humorous and ridiculous effects. In fig. 22 helicopters and pursuit planes cover the activities on the ground. In the lower picture FRELIMO's leader, Samora Machel, has taken the place of the famous Portuguese colonial military leader, General Kaulza. Instead of letting his hand rest on the holster, Machel uses his weapon and takes part in the fight against the enemy. His soldiers manage to hit the planes of the Portuguese airforce as well as the troops. Kaulza, his counterfigure in the composition, is fleeing the battle, leaving his men to die. One of these is shooting a fellow soldier, a deserter. Another kneels and prays in despair. The hands of the colonial soldiers are spread wide, claw-like. Compositions can contain more than one illustrated situation per sequence. In The Murderer Kaulza and His Gang (fig. 23) Kaulza is placed with his leading men, dispirited and angry, behind a set table. Port-wine and beer is served. The old men have had their wounds dressed and one of them is carrying a crutch marked 'Red Cross, Portugal'. Another is depicted 56

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0 IANGU10i4RIO KAULZA l O RU ■ANOO

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holding a cigarette. His arm is hairy. The hairiness can, like the elongated noses, be seen as a caricature of Portuguese physical characteristics. Kaulza is scratching his head. Another identified figure among the military leaders is 'J. Tiroa'. Grimacing fiercely, he is resting his head on his hand. General Kaulza confesses their loss in a comic strip balloon: Our plans failed. Our army was crushed. What are we going to tell the world about the lies we have told? Below the soldiers' table there are the graves of some who died during the Portuguese offensive in 1970-71. Two skeletons and one skull among crosses and chests illustrate the theme of the composition. A sign clarifies and emphasizes the scene. In the top right comer, level with the military leaders' table, is a Portuguese woman. She is wearing a cross around her neck. She seems to be weeping and she is holding her young son's hand. The text informs us that her sadness is due to the Portuguese loss of cars and aeroplanes. These three posters have been printed in several editions and in different sizes. Additional text in regular type-face and red print to accentuate certain parts of the compositions appeared later. They were also included in portfolios published in commemoration of the liberation by the Ministry of Information and FRELIMO. However, the first time the drawings were published, they were not used as posters, but as illustrations in the FRELIMO publication Voz da Revolu