Friday, August 13, 2010

Anti-American Art: Tell-tale Footprints


This North Korean poster, date unknown, is captioned simply, "Wicked Man." It shows the proverbial jackboot leaving behind a print of skulls, chains, nuclear bombs and "USA." This poster, like several others floating around the net including a couple I've posted here, turns out to come from a display of these posters at the California Literary Review, reviewing a book of North Korean posters compiled by David Heather. The CLS site provides revealing English translations of the sampled posters.

The art style is sort of sinister and chilling: while graphically simple it's a cold-war style that leaves out all the heroic and emotional appeals and goes straight to the allegorical representation of evil.

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