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[This is frustrating, not a single photo has turned up yet for this story. Hoping to get one or two later on...] Reuters. 4 March 2003. Artists Draw Weapons Against U.S. War on Iraq. LOS ANGELES -- In one image, anguished faces twist in horror as towering oil derricks burn behind them. In another, a shopping bag shaped like a U.S. flag is filled with fighter planes, a warship, an attack helicopter and a gun beneath the caption: "America: Dying for Business." Some of America's most acerbic graphic artists have drawn their weapons -- pens, spray cans and paintbrushes -- to protest a possible U.S. conflict with Iraq. Their works form part of "The Anti-War Show: U.S. Intervention from Korea to Iraq," which opened at the Bergamot Station collection of galleries in Santa Monica, California. The show is due to travel to New York, San Francisco, Detroit and Santa Barbara, Calif. The political posters convey the impression that U.S. foreign policy, like U.S. anti-war protests, hasn't changed much over the years. If the retrospective of political graphics is any indication, the homefront battle in the war against an Iraq conflict will be fought with many of the same sharp words and stark images that periodically plastered utility poles and walls during the past 50 years of U.S. foreign interventions and adventures. In one spray-painted stencil drawing in the show, a sleek U.S. bomber releases a litter of black bombs bearing the names of the countries the United States has attacked since World War II. Farther down the wall, a screaming Asian child rendered in green and black dots flees a napalm attack: "Over 2 million deaths in our last war ... stop the Gulf War Now!" In a nearby 1991 poster from the Gulf war period assembled from magazine cuttings, a finger-pointing President George Bush dressed in a red-white-and-blue top hat peers down beside the caption: "Uncle George Wants You ... to forget about failing banks, education, drugs, AIDS), poor health care, unemployment, crime, racism, corruption ... Have a Good War." A political activist since high school, the show's organizer, Carol Wells, was so familiar with the impassioned rhetoric and stark graphics of political posters that they became part of her personal landscape growing up. Although some of the works were beautifully illustrated, she said, "I saw posters as a way to find out about certain demonstrations but I didn't see them as a historical record, something that should be preserved." Her opinion changed after she began teaching art history at California State University at Fullerton, Calif., in 1981. She began collecting rally notices and protest signs from telephone poles and walls throughout the United States and during her travels in Central and South America. By 1987, the posters stowed beneath her bed numbered in the thousands, and she organized them into more than 200 exhibits that traveled the country. When the shows drew interest from other collectors and fellow radicals, Wells formed the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in West Los Angeles as a framework for accepting the offers of money and posters that flooded in. The center's collection now includes 50,000 pieces from all over the world, the oldest of which dates from the turn of the century -- a cry against a long-forgotten European pogrom. When well crafted, political graphics grab people's attention and change their world view, Wells said. The classics feature simple graphics, such as the famous 1968 Lorraine Schneider drawing of a daisy twined in the childish scrawl: "War is not healthy for children and other living things." The protest art that sprung from the U.S. reaction to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. came fast and furious with each act of Congress or troop movement. Congress' passage of the Patriots Act, designed to ease federal investigations into domestic terrorism, prompted the 2001 poster "Real patriots ask questions." The bombing of Afghanistan resulted in a 2002 illustration of a political button bearing the legend: "I am willing to bomb (blank) civilians in order to find a terrorist." The airdrop of food rations to Afghan civilians bombed out of their homes inspired the 2001 photo illustration of a box of rations printed with the McCarthyite words: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of a terrorist organization?" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ProletarianNews http://www.utopia2000.org --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bdn7KI.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html ==^================================================================
