North Korean propaganda art is nearly always pretty interesting
Check out the poster in this photo: North Koreans rallied in Pyongyang on Thursday, shouting anti-American slogans and denouncing international sanctions
which accompanies this New York Times report: North Koreans Condemn U.S. and Sanctions at Huge Rally by Choe San-Hung, June 25, 2009 .
Who is the little blond guy in the American bomb being smashed by giant North Korean hands? He looks to me like he has Poppy Bush's face.
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Nah, just looks like Uncle Sam. Are they quick enough to make it a Jew?
June 26, 2009 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Uncle Sam, I didn't think of that, could be. It's awfully weak as far as being a clear read, but yes it's quite possible. The thing is, the artist is very strong on getting graphic message across with the rest of the composition, one would think he could make a more recognizable Uncle Sam.
June 27, 2009 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't propaganda graphic art an interesting study? It is like magazine illustration - it has a second or two to grab attention and the graphics have to be powerful enough to do that.
June 26, 2009 8:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
The North Koreans are especially interesting, I have followed it a bit over time. First of all, remember, the country is in the situation where all artists have to be propaganda artists. So some of your most talented artists are propaganda artists. Then there is the thing that supposedly they do not have a lot of access to outside influence.
But my own eyes often tell the latter is not true! It used to be that much of the output was the traditional shlocky syrupy style of early Soviets or Mao China, you know the beaming healthful proletariat rendered with flowers (ala Thomas Kinkade with an oriental twist,) very little graphic power. But more and more over time one sees a switch to strong powerful graphics along the lines of pop art or cartoons. This one is pretty damn modern looking. It's actually an excellent modernist composition. Is it natural evolution that the artists are doing things like that there now or are they allowed access to contemporary Western media and imagery because of the political importance of their work? If it's the latter that's a dangerous development in a totalitarian state like that, you let artists have freedom like that and you will have trouble. :-) It could also be natural evolution, though, especially as I see that in their big stadium performance art pieces--those are really a homegrown thing and they have become more punchy and graphic over time and less fussy.
June 27, 2009 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
p.s. Given that Kim Il Jong is know to indulge heavily in a love for American movies, I would suspect that over time he may have warmed to the idea of giving top artists access to Western culture, too, to improve their ability to send messages to us as well as the North Korean populace.
June 27, 2009 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
oops, correction: Kim Jong Il.
June 27, 2009 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have never seen much of it and I thank you for posting this. There doesn't seem to be much sophistication in it - to my eye it seems really old-fashioned, stuck in that propaganda style pre WW 1. I sure got the message fast, though. I'd love to see their dissident art.
June 27, 2009 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I do think propaganda design is interesting. Is the drawing an upside down craft? The US on the guy's helmet reads "SU" as it should when upside down, but the "US" on the craft reads as if it is upright. (I know, I'm nitpicking:)
Anyone else notice that?
June 27, 2009 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well the nitpicking is what I am doing too. The top is so strong, the craft/bomb and American are confusing imagery. The question is: is it only confusing to us American? Is it a clear message over there, something we are missing? Is that Blondie instinctly recognizable as specific evil American or evil America?
But it is not unrealistic to think that that part is just weak. They make some real goofy mistakes sometimes because they don't appropriate Western images correctly when then use them, sometimes it can be hilarious how they misintepret.
June 27, 2009 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
It could be MacArthur. The helmet is vintage. Recall also that the US threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Chinese and Korean targets during the Korean War. Long memories.
June 27, 2009 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
On the other hand, the figure could just be a standard anonymous GI. Here are some other posters.
http://calitreview.com/875
June 27, 2009 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
“Let’s extensively raise goats in all families!”
Awesome posters.
June 27, 2009 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now this comment coming from you brings back memories.
On a news board I frequented long ago and far away, there was regular poster, a young guy in Montreal (who was French speaking and had pretty strong "Quebec-pride" sympathies; he was hanging out on an American news board to practice his English.)
We used to trade North Korean propaganda stuff we saw on a longstanding thread. His favorite was their potato songs and potato posters glorifying the potato and raising potatoes, they really amused him. Any goat promotional items, I am sure he would appreciate as well. You Canadians pretend like you have big differences but you are more alike then you think-hah.
June 27, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, you are on a good thought train there, they are still living in the 50's after all.
You made me think:
maybe he's Kilroy!
Kilroy was WWII but his popularity keep on to Korea, I imagine. Kilroy is allover my parents' late WWII high school yearbooks that I used to sneak and look at as a kid. They had them in the keepsake dresser drawer, and you think the stuff in there is something hands off to the kids so of course you look at it when they are out of the house. Since I thought I was not supposed to be looking at their yearbooks, I never asked them who Kilroy was and was real mystified who Kilroy was until high school history reading. (Kids these days don't know how lucky they are to have the internet now, hah.)
June 27, 2009 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
They look more European than American to me. The soldiers are nazified in the fierceness portrayed.
June 27, 2009 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
The whole photograph caught my attention. In the parade area in fromt of a banner adorned columned building we see 100K very malnourished people demonstrating in military like formation. The ranks and columns of people are so precise that diagonal allignment can be seen. They have been here before enough times that anybody who failed to show up would leave a gap in the formation and be easily identified. Each person looks at the same unseen thing and presents an identical fist salute. The theme poster is propped up like a cartoon thought balloon over their heads, and surely no one would voice a different opinion. This image was captured by an official photographer and cleared by the Ministry of Truth or Homeland Security or whatever they call it in North Korea, before it was sent out. I wonder what message they thought they were sending?
June 27, 2009 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
You have a good eye.
Yes, it's a whole package, the poster, the chanters, the setting.
Their skill at precision performance pieces is simply quite awesome. They use people as a medium to make political works of art like no one else has ever done. Nazi Germany did a little bit of this, and the Soviets and Mao's China quite a bit more, but what they do raises it to a whole nother level.
June 27, 2009 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
AA, if you haven't seen it: VBS.tv's "Vice Guide to North Korea", is fascinating. It has nothing to do with vice, btw. It is about an American video blogger/journalist, who snuck into N.Korea as a Canadian, and had to bring in his cameras as contraband. The first episode, I linked to above ends with him visiting a tea room out in the middle of nowhere on a deserted highway, run by a young N.Korean woman, who hasn't had a customer in many months. The whole series is very surreal.
June 27, 2009 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, I look forward to seeing it, sounds like just my cup o' tea.
June 27, 2009 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Off topic, but wonder if you've been interested in this...have you looked at video game production values lately? Many of the new games look fantastic. My younger son got me interested in the design and graphics of these games. One game in particular really caught my attention and that is a game called Bioshock. The influence is Art Deco a trend that seems to be influencing many of the young graphic artists today. It really does lend itself to the new medium of videogame/animation production.
As an aside, for awhile I was resistent to video game/animation as art because of the poor quality especially of Japanese animation in the past. It is interesting to me the prejudices and bias we have towards new genres of art by being stuck in the past. I was looking but I wasn't seeing. It gave me a scare that I wasn't open to it as a new art medium.
June 27, 2009 4:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I really must admit I can't be of much help to you there except to tell you that this is a big deal in serious contemporary art right now so it's not like you are on wrong track by thinking about it. I'm not talking about about simple influence of anime on fine art or simple video art, that's older stuff, I am saying that there is cross-fertilization of the two areas (video game designers and "fine artists") and lots of hoity toity philosophizing about it in publications like Art Forum. I can't be much help to you because I still have those prejudices you are talking about, I not as far along as you, I still got a sort of knee-jerk negative prejudice against video game culture it comes out of, I see the articles, I try to force myself to read up on it, but mostly I go "yeeeech, boy stuff." So you are more open-minded than me at this point, at the same time, contemporary art is not my field of specialization and there's plenty of stuff in my areas I have to keep up on, so I have that excuse. But you are right that if you don't learn about this, you might find yourself "out of it" if you pride yourself on understanding new art, like in a Whitney Biennial in the near future or similar. It really is being taken very seriously because the younger generation of serious artists it is part of their makeup.
June 27, 2009 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought of a better way to say what I was trying to say: questions of "virtual reality" are a major theme with young avantgarde fine artists right now, and I know you are well-read enough to understand why that would be. And they therefore consider the best video game designers as their brethren.
June 27, 2009 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
My son is studying game design so I really do have ready access to it and listen to so many young artists discussing it. Having so many young artists around forces me to keep up and keep my mind open.
June 27, 2009 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
(video of the ad @ link)
July 4, 2009 12:22 AM | Reply | Permalink