Graphic art in the summer of discontent: the 2004 election has attracted artists in numbers not seen for a generation. Their designs give progressive politics a distinct visibility

Art in America, Oct, 2004 by Faye Hirsch

New York, late June 2004: On a wall of feel-good iPod ads showing wired-up kids in silhouette dancing against electric-colored backgrounds, there appears, for a few hours, the now-iconic hooded prisoner who has become the emblem of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Like the ad kids, this figure, too, is rendered in black silhouette on Day-Glo; but the wiring connects to a far different tale. Were it not for the Internet, medium of choice for latter-day agitprop, this "iRaq" intervention might seem like urban legend: by the time one returns for a reality check, to Broome Street, to Bond and Lafayette, to last night's subway platform, the poster has vanished. Yet, on the Web, a record of the action is disseminated, a salvo in the multi-front war against political--and visual--complacency.

With the Republican National Convention slated to assemble in New York from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, artistic activity in the city was multifarious throughout the summer. Not since the Vietnam War era had so many individuals and groups, scattered far and wide, devised so diverse an array of protest graphics. Already during the previous year, politically themed shows, mounted in response to the Iraq war, were on the increase; Paula Cooper inaugurated her new Chelsea bookstore, 192 Books, in May 2003, for example, with a show titled "Human Wrongs, Literature and the Art of Protest," with works by Zoe Leonard, Adrian Piper, Hans Haacke and others. For it, Haacke created a digital print, Stuff Happens, in which white stars tumble through a blue sky to a red-and-white striped ground: an American flag with its elements in disarray. Such terse visual commentary seemed to be the aim of many artists as the convention neared.

Numerous exhibitions were organized toward the end of August, sometimes last-minute, ranging from the Whitney Museum's historical survey of responses to Vietnam, "Memorials of War" [through Nov. 28], to "Power T's," a fund-raising show at Pierogi in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Here more than 75 artists generated designs that organizer and artist Mike Ballou printed out and tacked to the wall inside blue-tape outlines shaped like shirts. In a celebratory atmosphere, visitors selected their favorites to be printed on the spot as T-shirts (the proceeds, at $30 a pop, went to the Democratic National Committee), Like "Power T's," many exhibitions were up for just a week or two, coinciding with the convention.

Among veteran artists with new work was Sue Coe, showing drawings at Galerie St. Etienne for her book, just issued, Bully: Master of the Global Merry-Go-Round, which she co-authored with writer Judith Brody (Four Walls Eight Windows, $18). Packed with dense texts combining facts about globalization and war with anagrams and doggerel, the book tours an allegorical carnival studded with nightmarish rides and sideshow freaks. These, of course, are none other than the authors' political targets, rendered in Coe's moody lighting and distorted contours. "Snake Show," reads a sign, and, below, Dick Cheney, as a boa constrictor with a monstrous second head (George W. Bush), strangles his female prey.

Graphic mobilization has taken many forms. A small group of anonymous artists and writers lofted a 15-foot banner sporting the words "NO BUSH LIES WARS," attached to large multicolored helium balloons, over the heads of an astonished (and cheering) rush-hour crowd in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal on Aug. 16. (After several hours resting against the famous star-painted vault, the banner wafted slowly down, reportedly helped along by a rubber or cork bullet shot into one of the balloons by a soldier guarding the station.) Gigantic Arts Space (GAS), an alternative gallery in Tribeca, relinquished its digs to independent media from across the country and offered ephemera for sale (e.g., "Psychedelic Republicans," trading cards illustrated with parodic portraits: Bush as a neon Wolf-Man, Cheney as an orange-eyed beast enveloped in hallucinogenic mists, etc.). Directing protesters (and ostensibly Republicans) through the city was The People's Guide to the Republican Convention, a splendid two-sided map of events and sites devised by artists Paul Chan, Nadxi Mannello and Joshua Brietbart with a fleet of researchers and invited artists [see "Artworld," Sept., '04]. The colorful guide was being handed out for free at sites throughout town, including GAS.

Election-specific graphics downloadable from the Internet, and therefore adaptable to many uses (as posters, stickers, T-shirts, etc.), began proliferating just before the convention. The No RNC Poster Project, which bills itself on-line as "visual resistance to the Republican National Convention," had additionally published, by the time of the convention, two free newsprint booklets, each containing a dozen or so removable 11-by-17-inch wheat-paste-ready, black-and-while posters issued by a variety of activist groups.

Also downloadable was the black, white and red slogan 'I'm Voting Bush Out" (devised by a group with the same name, with the Web address imvoting.com); the look, clean and concise, is redolent of late '80s-early '90s Barbara Krugeresque graphics by AIDS activists Gran Fury and others. The design was painted on a truck that drove around town handing out the group's stickers and buttons, Of a similar directness was a "Not W" logo--an encircled W crossed out by a red diagonal--which a group called Window Treatment NYC encouraged people to download and place in their windows, whether or not they chose to remain in the city during the convention.