In the preface, NPR’s always-brilliant media pundit Brooke Gladstone writes:
We media consumers are far too jaded by national politics to be influenced by campaign posters, right? We all know that posters are blatant manipulations, intended not to inform but to enlist. They emphasize faces and catchphrases. They condense complicated issues into jagged little pills. They are blunt instruments.
At the same time, the most effective campaign posters of every era leave as much as possible to the voter’s imagination. They are like Japanese manga: the less detailed the image, the more easily we can identify with the candidate, the more space for projecting our dreams. The more specific the image, the greater the risk of creating a feeling of “otherness,” which translates into death at the polls.
What emerges is a quilt-portrait of politics itself, stitched together by a common thread of propaganda techniques and the underlying ideological necessities they bespeak, unchanging across the ages — all the more striking given many of these posters come from an age predating marketing as we know it and what Gladstone calls the “now never-ending research into the psychology of primary colors, the semiotics of sans serif, and the syntactics of the sound bite.”
1856: James Buchanan (Democrat) v. James Fremont (Republican) v. Millard Fillmore (American)1860: Abraham Lincoln (Republican) v. Stephen Douglas (Democrat) v. John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat) v. John Bell (Constitutional Union)1864: Abraham Lincoln (Republican) v. George B. McClellan (Democrat)1872: Ulysses S. Grant (Republican) v. Horace Greeley (Liberal Republican)
Gladstone observes:
The ultimate lesson of this collection is how choppy those waters are. Political art is nothing less than an illustration of the skirmishes and stalemates that created and continue to animate the American experiment. As you look at each poster and read about each campaign, it becomes increasingly clear that the tug of war over taxes and trade, the distribution of wealth and power, and the role of government itself, will never end.
Every generation renews the battle and fights it again. And every time, political candidates borrow from past campaigns the lexicon of perpetual political war. It reverberates in the slogans and the speeches, the urgent need: for tax relief or social protections, for an active government or a dormant one, for war or peace, to stay the course or to change direction.
1908: William H. Taft (Republican) v. William J. Bryan (Democrat) v. Eugene V. Debs (Socialist)1924: Calvin Coolidge (Republican) v. John Davis (Democrat) v. Robert La Follette (Progressive)1928: Herbert Hoover (Republican) v. Al Smith (Democrat)1948: Harry S. Truman (Democrat) v. Thomas E. Dewey (Republican) v. J. Strom Thurmond (States’ Rights Democrat) v. Henry A. Wallace (Progressive)1968: Richard M. Nixon (Republican) v. Hubert Humphrey (Democrat) v. George Wallace (Independent)1968: Richard M. Nixon (Republican) v. Hubert Humphrey (Democrat) v. George Wallace (Independent)1968: Richard M. Nixon (Republican) v. Hubert Humphrey (Democrat) v. George Wallace (Independent)1968: Richard M. Nixon (Republican) v. Hubert Humphrey (Democrat) v. George Wallace (Independent)1972: Richard M. Nixon (Republican) v. George McGovern (Democrat)1980: Ronald Reagan (Republican) v. Jimmy Carter (Democrat) v. John Anderson (Independent)1980: Ronald Reagan (Republican) v. Jimmy Carter (Democrat) v. John Anderson (Independent)1988: George H. W. Bush (Republican) v. Michael Dukakis (Democrat)2008: Barack Obama (Democrat) v. John McCain (Republican)2008: Barack Obama (Democrat) v. John McCain (Republican)
At once a time-capsule of history and an invaluable timeline of design evolution,Presidential Campaign Posters offers a rare look at the craftsmanship of political propaganda and the abiding aspects of the human condition that it bespeaks.
“I was incredibly sad about Notre-Dame because it’s such a beautiful building,” Mr Géant said in an interview with CNN. “But to hear there is life when it comes to the bees, that’s just wonderful.” “Thank goodness the flames didn’t touch them,” he added. “It’s a miracle!”
You may recognize Morandi for his dusty still life bottles, carefully and quietly clustered in the center of the canvas. Recently, I’ve been revisiting his lesser-known but more personally inspiring collection of landscapes. In classes, we’ve been talking about simplifying a composition into shapes, and applying those shapes to pull you through the composition with …
I recently posted about my happy obsession with The Great Pottery Throwdown. Rich Miller is one of the regulars on the show; first as the kiln technician, then later as a judge, holding equanimity while the other judge bursts into tears. I liked the clear style of his critiques so I looked up his work, …
These are some paintings in which my favorite part is the wall. Enjoy. Do not paint a white thing white. A white thing is everything other than white. The video below illuminates some of the colors actually present in an image of a white horse, and a white flower. Because colors change according to what they’re next to, they still …
A Visual History of Presidential Campaign Posters: 200 Years of Election Art from the Library of Congress Archives
A brief visual history of political propaganda design.
BY MARIA POPOVA
Original post from BrainPickings
In the preface, NPR’s always-brilliant media pundit Brooke Gladstone writes:
What emerges is a quilt-portrait of politics itself, stitched together by a common thread of propaganda techniques and the underlying ideological necessities they bespeak, unchanging across the ages — all the more striking given many of these posters come from an age predating marketing as we know it and what Gladstone calls the “now never-ending research into the psychology of primary colors, the semiotics of sans serif, and the syntactics of the sound bite.”
Gladstone observes:
At once a time-capsule of history and an invaluable timeline of design evolution,Presidential Campaign Posters offers a rare look at the craftsmanship of political propaganda and the abiding aspects of the human condition that it bespeaks.
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Morandi’s Landscapes
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