Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Protest Posters: Art with a Message

This poster created by the Art Department 
of Adbusters Magazine was published as a pull-out poster 
in the September/October issue. It was on newsstands in July.
It set the date for the occupation of Wall Street.

The question, "What is our one demand?" rests above a graceful ballerina alight the raging bull of Wall Street. Behind them cops in riot gear approach through the haze, a foreshadowing of tear gas?  It's an effective poster. Not all political posters work so well. Check out the Occupy Wall Street: Poster smackdown on Salon.com, a slide show and review of some of the posters newly fostered by the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street movement. 

Just a few posters from the Occupy Wall Street: Poster smackdown on Salon.com

The two posters below rely on giving familiar imagery a new twist. As Londoners occupy St. Paul's, the familiar, recently re-popularized, "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster that admonished the Brits to keep a stiff upper lip during the dark days of World War II has been adapted to the current crisis with "Keep Calm and Occupy London". The Occupy Wall Street poster by Lalo Alcaraz topples a statue of the tycoon from the popular American game of Monopoly in a scene strikingly reminiscent of the toppling of that statue of Saddam Hussein when U.S. troops entered Baghdad.