Might is Right. TOTALITARIAN ART

Today, a look at the wonderful and frightening world ot the totalitarian propaganda poster. Wonderful? Yes, in the sense that these posters seem to be selling a dream, the promise of a brighter more purposeful future in the ranks of whichever 'grand enterprise' is bidding for your unquestioning alliegence. Notice the steely-eyed determination and frightening fanaticism of the SS man or the Chinese farmer thrusting his little red book into the air in defiance- of what? Democracy? Free Speech? Liberalism? All of these posters use colour and design to sell their product, but what exactly is the product? To me it looks like struggle, aggression, hatred of outsiders/non believers and a money-back guarantee of conflict.

The Brilliance of Italian Movie Posters

I yield to no man in my respect for the art of photograpy, but in recent years the media has become awash with photographic images, usually very average ones at that. When it came to movie posters I usually found those that relied on photographic depictions of the film and stars to be somewhat flat and unexciting, particularly when compared to the multicolured panache of a high quality painted poster. Yes, there were some bad ones, but just look at how exciting a poster can be, especially in the hands of the talented, often anonymous, Italian artists.