John Heartfield’s work – why don’t we see work like this today?
I was quite taken with the pictures of his work in the readings, and did some of my own research. As usual, The Art Story has a nice listing of his more important work (Meggs doesn’t have room to do same), with background, context, and critiques of each one (highly recommend this site – it is art history, not graphic design history, but I really like being able to see the images in a larger and zoomed in format):
https://www.theartstory.org/artist/heartfield-john/
It also looks like he is receiving renewed attention, perhaps because we are seeing a rise in authoritarian and even fascists regimes across the world, not to mention Putin’s invasion of Ukraine which is a bellwether for Europe. The BBC has a nice article about a traveling exhibition about his work here: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200713-the-images-that-fought-the-nazis and then here’s a link to the Akademie der Künste exhibition page: https://www.adk.de/en/projects/2020/heartfield/exhibition.htm (if it is in German, click on the “English” tab in the right hand corner).
By the way, the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) is in Berlin and was established in 1696. so it is one of the oldest cultural institutes in Europe.
Both the BBC article and the museum’s page talk about how his work has become topical again with the rise of far-right leaders and groups, bringing with them the attacks on art, hate toward minorities and other groups deemed as “degenerate”. I use “degenerate” because that was the tern used by Hitler and the rising Nazi party to label Jews, Catholics, artists, gay people, and more. We are seeing the same labeling here in the US, with laws being passed against drag shows, trans medical care, and well, lots more. So, I ask again, why don’t we see this kind of political art today when the conditions are similar?
We have political cartoons, and we have essays and editorials, but nothing like Heartfield’s posters. Is it a question of an artist making protest posters like this but not being seen widely? Heartfield published many of his political posters for the Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (The Worker’s Illustrated Magazine) or AIZ magazine, which probably wasn’t read by everyone in Germany, but his work was so provocative, the word spread. I don’t claim to read every magazine and newspaper out there, but I do keep tabs on many of them and use social media, I just cannot remember seeing anything like Heartfield. I’ll keep looking….