Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Images of Revolution
Graphic Art from 1905 Russia
By David King & Cathy Porter

Ill throw a couple of images up later...

Summary: I picked this book up mostly because of the vibrant reds mixed among the various revolutionary images. The images were amazing for the year they were made, 1905. They came from journals which were mixtures of illustration(sometimes in the form of comic) and texts like poems and manifesto’s . The society at that time I would not want to imagine after seeing some of the gruesome images in the book. Although the copy I looked at already had some pages ripped out, I’m guessing for wall art, my favorite that was still there was a dark bird perched on a pile of skulls with deep reds in the backing color. The accompanying text is a history of the period of which these journals came out, as well as a history of their censorships, closings…etc… The vast number of journals that came out, some only for a “one-shot” or maybe three issues, show the importance of political communication for a people in the situation they were in. On a side….Before checking this book out I was unaware of the use of the skeleton in the cultural history of revolution.

Notes:
P18 description of use and creation of a subversive language in Russia that was used to express opposition to the old regime…Aesopian Language mentioned….(similar to French “change in the everything…” “Change in the language” in literature and revolution)
18 Satirical Language and Allegorical language joined and became part of everyday speech
19 The images of 1905 show a story of heroic failure of the revolution
20 Katharine the Grate styled herself in the “media” as a platonic “philosopher king”
21 talk of the start of capitalization in Katharine’s Russia (enclosure)
23 early satirical journals of Russia would later have huge effect on generation later
23 1860’s saw this merging of classical satire with popular speech
24 Dmitry Minaev noted that “the writer does not have the power to embody all the evils of contemporary society in art, he must therefore always be on the watch for the ridicules, it is this he must expose.”
31 Author notes that there was a crying need for a literature which could give popular expression to the rage and courage of the previous months
31 (Art as weapon Metaphor) Yuri Artsybushev had trained “a cadre of satirical soldiers”
31 word “Aesopian” noted again….need to read up on Aesopian Fables
31 *Satire attains its greatest significance which a newly evolving class creates an ideology considerably more advanced than that of the ruling class but has not yet the ability to conquer it” Lunacharsky
33 Power of the word discussed…add up…how many hours of jail time per revolutionary word…
39 Dobuzhinsky believed that “only through a clear enunciation of artistic principals could art be merged with life to enlightened the masses in the spirit of beauty
43 “To be a committed journalist one must be steeped in the programs of one party or another, but life hasn’t divided people into parties yet, and satire can still stride freely across such barriers.

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