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9 March 2009/

Che – The Creation of a Political Icon

by Wally Olins at 12:34 pm 9 March 2009
Filed under: Art, Branding

All political movements depend for their popularity on art. Art makes power, dramatic, exciting even. It draws people in, it engages, instructs and involves. That’s when art becomes propaganda.

The more dramatic the political movement the more dramatic the art. For thousands of years in every civilisation from the ancient Egyptians onwards, political rulers have mounted creative, art fuelled propaganda displays to sustain the loyalty of the citizen. They have constructed buildings; pyramids, palaces, citadels, temples, and triumphal arches. They have painted heroic and instructive pictures demonstrating triumphs, real or imagined. This is of course official art. Art as a component of the national brand. 

Official political art simplifies, distorts and dramatizes events in order to create loyalty and enthusiasm.

Over centuries while the technologies of political art have changed, its intentions have remained the same. The Romans created buildings, erected triumphal arches, built statues of heroic figures and celebrated their military and civic virtues. During the latter part of the twentieth century the Maoist Chinese communist state in China developed the process a lot further. The Great Leader swimming, the Great Leader smiling on crowds, the Great Leader both swimming and smiling. The parades, the statues, the exhibitions and above all the icons, the portraits, the statuettes and the little red books – more and more ubiquitous. The whole point of traditional art as manifested in political power has been to underline the official political system, it has been carved out by official artists and architects supported by the state. It’s an internally directed manifestation of the national brand.

The Che Guevera material is exactly the opposite of all that. Images of Che also capture and encapsulate a political movement but they are subversive and unofficial. They are not from or for the system, they are despite the system and they undermine and threaten it. And they also present a much more individual, even anarchic political view.

The whole point of traditional art as manifested in political power has been to underline the official political system. The really interesting thing about the Che stuff is that it undermines the state and is intended to change the status quo.

The Che material is heavily, cleverly, wittily branded. The Korda photograph particularly, is iconic. It is as grand a piece of art as anything that Jacques Louis David painted for Napoleon, much better than anything created for Hitler, Stalin or Mao – it serves the same kind of purpose – to demonstrate to inspire and to educate. But it emerged spontaneously – and that is its unique strength. And it’s profoundly anti-state, and anti-official. It’s a counter cultural highly contemporary symbol of international revolt. Remarkable!

Literary credit

The above is an extract from a contribution written by Wally Olins for the catalogue Art and Power: Europe under the dictators 1930-45, organised by the Hayward Gallery, London, in collaboration with the Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona and the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, 43.