The continued power of Che Guevara as a symbol of hope and opposition across cultures is examined at Mason Gross Galleries.
By: Megan Sullivan
Ernesto "Che" Guevara stood stalwartly on the podium, shoulders broadened, and looked into the distance with pensive eyes. His dark, wispy hair flowed out from underneath his starred beret.
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Photographer Alberto Korda, on assignment for the Cuban newspaper Revolucion, captured the gazing Guevara on film. It was March 5, 1960, at a memorial service for the victims of La Coubre, a freighter explosion in Havana harbor. The newspaper rejected the Guevara photo, instead running pictures of Fidel Castro and the French writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
The photograph wasn’t published until seven years later, after the leader of Cuban and internationalist guerrillas was executed Oct. 9, 1967. It quickly became one of the most famous photographs in the world.
In 1968, Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick made a two-tone portrait based on the Korda photograph. Since then, a modified version of the portrait has been reproduced on a wide range of media. Guevara became an icon, and his image one of the most reproduced in history. For many, the image is of a romantic hero who fought for equality evocative, glamorous, a symbol of rebellion. Others see a totalitarian, murderer and opponent of freedom.
Marking the 40th anniversary of Guevara’s death, Mason Gross Galleries in New Brunswick has mounted an exhibition inspired by an extensive private collection of posters, dating from the 1960s to the present, that depicts the iconic Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary. Beauty Is in the Street: The Iconography of Idealism, on view through June 8, brings part of that collection together with specially commissioned contemporary artworks made in response to the posters as printed artifacts and ideas.
"The exhibition is not a celebration of Che, it’s about contradictions and complexities," says curator Gerry Beegan, a professor of visual arts at Mason Gross.
California-based collector Lisebet Tellefsen’s Guevara posters hang in one of the gallery’s side wings. Many are screenprints of Guevara in an array of bright colors, based on the Korda photo, that emphasize the flat surface and are often bleached out to remove depth and detail. Many of the artists employ repetition in their works, as seen in one of the first posters commemorating Guevara’s death by Havana-born artist Niko. Six Guevaras of different sizes with orange faces and black features spread over the poster, which proclaims "Hasta La Victoria Siempre" (until victory always). Nearby hangs a 20th Century Fox poster for the 1969 movie Che!, with Omar Sharif drawn in the likeness of Guevara. The tagline reads: "The doctor turned fighter. The fighter turned revolutionary. The revolutionary turned martyr to some, murderer to others."
The selected posters show both the political and pop culture aspects of Guevara in Ms. Tellefsen’s collection. "People sometimes with Che say, ‘Oh it’s terrible, it’s become pop culture,’" Mr. Beegan says. "But in fact it was pop culture right from the beginning."
One of the more contemporary works shows a figure wearing a Guevara T-shirt, and how an imprint of Guevara’s face remains on his chest when the shirt comes off. "This is saying, ‘OK, maybe I’ll wear the Che T-shirt, but it goes deeper than that. It’s tattooed on me, it’s a part of me,’" Mr. Beegan says.
The main gallery space and two other side wings feature the commissioned works. Mr. Beegan sent the artists images of Ms. Tellefsen’s poster collection, as well as a copy of Susan Sontag’s essay "Posters: Advertisement, Art, Political Artifact, Commodity," to use when creating their pieces. Using animation, photography and posters, the artists and designers from several different countries explore themes of iconography, reproduction and representation.
In a darkened room, images of Guevara found on the streets of New York City project onto a screen. Dutch artist Liselot Van Der Heijden captures a bizarre mixture of references made through T-shirt vendor displays in her "Che in New York." Guevara might find company with Al Pacino as Scarface and Johnny Cash flipping the bird. His image might be buried in a sea of shirts laden with obscenities and touting drug and alcohol use. If those penetrating eyes trapped on cotton could see, what would Guevara think of the neighboring "Your Mom Thinks I’m Hot," "Jesus is My Homeboy" or "Welcome to America: Now Speak English" T-shirts?
While sitting on a cushioned bench and watching the juxtaposition of his image flash on the screen, one can hear Guevara’s United Nations speech from Dec. 11, 1964, playing over a set of speakers. The speech is translated into English and posted on the wall opposite the projection screen. "(His image) does get diluted… it becomes this logo, it becomes weakened," Mr. Beegan says in response to the slide show. "It can apply to anything. But you can argue that even though it is diluted, it nevertheless is very powerful."
On the back wall of the main gallery, a large display of individual letters on squares spells out "one part sentimentality, one part irony, one part detachment." The Dutch design group, Experimental Jet Set, took a quote from the Sontag essay and turned it into a beautiful and eye-catching artwork. In her essay, Sontag discusses how things that were intended as political messages have now become commodities.
"They’re showing that, in fact, aesthetic things, beautiful things, can still be politically powerful, even if they do become commodities," Mr. Beegan says of the piece. He also draws a parallel to the Guevara images in Ms. Van Der Heijden’s installation. "Che might be surrounded by all this stuff, you could say it’s empty," he says, "but the nature of that image is still going to speak to people."
New York City artist Carrie Moyer interpreted Guevara’s image as that of a rock star or pop idol. "I think that was a lot of his appeal in the ’60s, certainly in the West," Mr. Beegan says. Ms. Moyer printed dozens of posters that proclaim, "Amigas! Get Your Che On!" The poster portrays Guevara as more of an androgynous figure with slightly longer, flowing hair and a purple beret with the female symbol replacing the star.
As part of a community outreach effort, works by a group of New Brunswick High School students are plastered overtop Ms. Moyer’s posters. Through collaborations with Rutgers’ Center for Latino Arts and Culture, the New Brunswick-based Puerto Rican Action Board and the New Brunswick School-Based Youth Services Program, Mason Gross design students provided mentoring and instruction to the local high school students during the spring semester. The students learned the basic design concepts and skills and applied them to their own icons, using the classic Guevara posters as models. The icons they designed include Beyoncé Knowles, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Busta Rhymes and Bill Gates.
The commissioned pieces are not limited to Guevara’s image or his person, however. Cristóbal Leyht, another New York City artist, has blown up an image of Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra with lyrics from her famous song "Gracias a la Vida" for his piece. Parra, a part of Chile’s national identity in the ’60s, died the same year as Guevara.
"It’s a ’60s figure being memorialized in a, I think, less aggressive manner," Mr. Beegan says. "We think of Che as being quite aggressive and revolutionary she was revolutionary, but in a different way."
Henry VIII’s Wives, an artists’ collaborative based in Scotland and Scandanavia, photographed an elderly woman in Budapest, wearing a Kangol beret and gazing into the distance as Guevara did in his famous photograph. "If it wasn’t in this exhibition you wouldn’t relate it to Che, but because she’s photographed in this particular way, she becomes this Che-like figure," Mr. Beegan says. "I think they’re talking about how maybe other people are heroic an anonymous old lady can be a heroic figure."
Other artists are more critical of Guevara. Josh MacPhee, an artist, activist and curator in Troy, N.Y., thinks Guevara would be pleased with how his image has become diluted as an icon. "The real Che is quite problematic," Mr. Beegan says. "Josh is saying that Che would actually be delighted by that sort of generalized symbol. Then his own record, his actual deeds, are kind of lost in that."
Mr. MacPhee criticizes Guevara’s violence (perhaps he was a bit too much in love with it?) and the view that super guerillas could change the world without even asking people how they wanted society to be. The set of hand silk-screened prints, "Arrogance, Authoritarianism and Hatred," incorporates quotes made by Guevara or about him. One quotes Guevara as saying, "If the Soviet missiles had been under Cuban control, I would have fired them off," as a mushroom cloud puffs in the background and a smiling Guevara looks up at the sky. Another shows him in battle stance, his gun pointed, paired with his quote, "Hatred is an element of the struggle, transforming us into an effective, violent, seductive and cold killing machine."
"This exhibition looks at the continued power of Che as a symbol of hope and of opposition across cultures," Mr. Beegan writes in his curator’s statement. "Whatever one might think of his beliefs, his use of violence and his political failures, Che retains a remarkable cultural resonance 40 years after his death."
Beauty Is in the Street: The Iconography of Idealism is on view at Mason Gross Galleries, 33 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick, through June 8. Running simultaneously is Interdisciplinary Lab 1: Repetition, an exhibition created through a collaboration between the dance and visual arts departments. Free admission. Hours: Tues.-Sat. 1-6 p.m.; www.masongross.rutgers.edu