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Popoganda at Beep Beep!  The gallery's new show opens 10 January
By Pine Magazine Staff
posted: Friday, 09 January 2009
Propaganda has often proved to be an effective tool to convey ideas. The images are almost a visual onomatopoeia, instantly conveying a thought or idea most often without the need for words. Think Russia during wars, or the image of Che Guevara, which is one of the world's most universally merchandized images.
The recent presidential election brought to the national forefront the use of propaganda -- most notably through Shepard Fairey's image of Obama, though similar images emerged throughout local communities. Propaganda is also increasingly common in marketing, though of course it can always be argued that political campaigns are nothing but marketing for one's own party. And now Atlanta's Beep Beep Gallery enters the propaganda arena in its new show "Popaganda," opening Saturday, 10 January. The show encourages an irreverence for politics by having the artists create works that are focused on their own interests, with each piece promoting itself, not an outside cause. Beep Beep's James McConnell explains more. Holly Lang/Pine Magazine: Tell us a little about this show and your motivation for hosting it at Beep Beep.
James McConnell/Beep Beep Gallery: "Popaganda" is a show about the artists' take on the art of propaganda. It's fairly open ended, but hopefully it's modeled after, interpretive of, or satirizing modern propaganda. Artists include: Evereman, Rene Arriagada aka Transmit Device, Sat Kirpal Khalsa, Ben Goldman, Travis Dodd aka Machete, Bryan Westberry, Kerri Boles, Metatronic, Charstarr, Stenvik Mostrom, Baxter Crane, Bean Summers, J.R. Schulz and Reed Elliot.
As far as hosting it at Beep Beep, our artist base is fairly young so I think in part we were thinking about the street art aspect of it. Lots of artists our age put their images (whether graffiti, wheatpaste, sculpture, etc.) on the street, most of which is fairly iconic and repetitious and, in relation to this show, forms of propaganda. Propaganda without a purpose or agenda, just the art itself and getting people to notice.
PM: What prompted the idea of creating propaganda for the sake of promoting the art itself? How have the artists responded?
JM: With our zine "Metatronic," (Beep Beep co-owner) Mark (Basehore) and I were really into perpetuating false ideas. Metatronic became a religion of new age babble and kabbalic number theories. We make religious tracts like you find in bus stations, but we would alter all the text to make it more ridiculous and non-sensical. It's very much propaganda with no end to it, no product or cause to follow if you do in fact ascribe to what it's saying.
The great thing about these kinds of group shows is you never know what you're going to get when you go to hang the show. We've got a great group of cats involved that stylistically are very diverse and I'm sure their agendas will be equally so. We gave some ideas and examples but there's no guidelines or anything, so some pieces could be very political or they could be about stopping the invading milk people from planet Lactosis. You guys will find out pretty much when we do!
PM: You've mentioned Shepard Fairey as a recent example of an artist whose work has blurred the lines of propaganda, satire, marketing and fine art. He's rather well known for his "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" posters, though his images of Obama are considered one of the more incredibly iconic politically propagandized images in this century. In your opinion, how does someone like Fairey influence artists, if at all?
JM: He's quite a conundrum. The influence of his style, the design as art combined with street legitimacy, can be seen all over the art world. On the other hand he's made a ton off of his faux propaganda, so it seems like a ton of artists are following his formula and putting up a few wheatpastes and then linking it back to their clothing line or whatever. That style of art is very simple and direct, and is certainly rooted in the principles of design linked to advertising. However, without the street presence, which these days can justify pretty much anything an artist does, it's just advertising. He's put in a lot of work and definitely cannot be discounted as far as the current street art movement goes, but a lot of his followers haven't put in that kind of work.
PM: How do you feel politically irreverent propaganda plays into the idea of propaganda itself? And do you feel the definition of propaganda has shifted as marketing and advertising has become more prominent in the last century?
JM: I'm not sure there is much difference between marketing and propaganda. Both seem to incorporate the same elements. Military recruiting commercials look like video games.
Video games are used as recruiting vehicles for the military. Shepard Fairey's Obama portrait you mentioned earlier is a perfect synthesis of the two: it's simple and direct like political slogans, but iconic and beautiful like advertisements. Honestly I think of pretty much and imagery with an agenda as propaganda including the promotion done for this show.
PM: In your opinion, political or not, what is one of the more striking examples of propaganda in the last 200 years?
JM: That's tough! Off the top of my head I'd say Rosie the Riveter. "We Can Do It!" Very iconic, even these days. It's been appropriated as feminist recently, but to me the whole thing is very sexist. Rosie was clearly made to look more masculine, even androgynous, to make women think they were as tough and capable as men only to dismiss them after the war for the men they were supposedly equal to. But then alternately it sort of opened up the doors for women's equality in the work place and a shift in the family dynamics of the late 20th century. Powerful stuff. |
