ART NEXUS Propaganda!

Billed as the first exhibition of its kind in New York city approximately 80 original Cuban designed silk-screened political and film posters from the 1950s to thelate 1990s were displayed. The exhibition was part of a broader commitment by AIGA to establish a progressive cultural context for design and much attention has been given to Latin-based graphics and programs. The parallelisms here are self-conscious: the applied arts have always had to negotiate the treacherous relation between the contractual need for communication and the idealistic freedom of creativity. The contractual basis is generally money; in a socialist country it is the ideology and export of the Cuban Revolution and their claims for a new society. Each -capitalism and ideology- exertsdemands. But are they separate; are they united around communication or esthetics? How the exhibition named and handled these relationships is integral to understanding the issues. The exhibition distinguished and separated political from film posters. Political posters were grouped in two sets by dates (1950s and 60s, then 1970s and 80s) on opposite walls preceded by a general introductory statement and political chronologies beginning with Castro's 1953 failed insurrection against Batista. There was no exact correlation between the chronological events and the posters, but a general tone of history and politics was established with no obvious bias. An equal number of film posters dated from the 1960s to 1999 were displayed separately on the differently colored back walls, preceded by a brief overview of film posters that claimed them superior in quality. Traditionally, Cuban film posters are considered more individual and "artistic" with less direct restrictions, while the political posters are considered more directed and less individualized, often unsigned. Thus the film posters are considered "better" because they are less obviously attached to ideology. The message here and throughout the exhibition-and the confusion-is that politics stymie, even sully, individual esthetic creativity. As the introductory statement from the director of the AIGA stated, isn't it amazing the Cuban artists were so creative under such restrictions. Such a position is at least naïve and certainly tendentious. It speaks to a belief structure that organizes and underlies the exhibition. This reviewer saw more parallels than differences between the two genres of politics and film, at least until the 1990s, when a new generation of film poster designers emerged. For example, the elder, formative generation, such as Raúl Martínez (b. 1927) and Alfredo González Rostgaard, provided posters for both arenas across several decades with little change between typologies. Each was consistently bold and wide in range; each amply demonstrated the claims made for the Cuban poster movement. As Félix Beltrán, the Cuban poster designer living in Mexico City since 1979, stated in the catalogue interview: "the poster was the great creative force in Cuba" and this exhibit supports the claim. But Beltran's interview is also the basis for the one-dimensional history in the catalogue by the Miami- based curator, Maggy Cuesta. No other history or opinion appears. In this ex-patriot's view only the good designers left the revolution because it proved a "straightjacket" to personal creativity, a creativity he praises but also contradicts as he also argues its debt to the early political hacks rather than individual designers. The many and important gaps and contradictions become disturbing when we read his interview with the introductory wall statement of the Executive Director of AIGA, Richard Grefé: graphic design is a practical art yet "the art of visualizing ideas" that "frees one to think new thoughts." Only those who live in a commercial (read free) society understand such qualities, against the ambiguity of "those who seek officially to control the message." No matter how sympathetic we are to the arguments here-that design is an art form equal to the fine arts in its abilities to express and communicate directly or that "our" freedom is better than Cuban "freedom" under Castro- there are consistent assumptions and confusions between esthetic creativity, personal and political freedoms, and cultural equivalencies, without the necessary nuances of history. The historical circumstances of production in Cuba make the relation between aesthetics and politics so different from our own that we cannot make judgments except each in our own terms. For years we have known (and written) that the relation of art to politics is complex, more so in Cuba, and especially within the Cuban poster movement with its relationships to the Cuban revolution, to Cuban popular arts, old-line Eastern bloc art, the contemporary commercial gallery art of the US, and even to contemporary commercial music. Simply put: politics makes for a stranger bedfellow than the polarities in the exhibition allow. These same complexities are imbedded in the whole history of modern graphics and are what make the field fascinating. Obviously we gain little and sacrifice much by quelling other voices without recognizing our own bias, whether by design or inadvertent consequence. We need the AIGA to continue their robust and progressive programs but also need them to be more aware, more attuned to and presentational of the complexities in a field that they are best equipped and positioned to bring to a fuller sense of critical history.