cover image Art as Activist: Revolutionary Posters from Central and Eastern Europe

Art as Activist: Revolutionary Posters from Central and Eastern Europe

Universe Books. Universe Publishing(NY), $24.95 (160pp) ISBN 978-0-87663-623-7

Posters played a vital role in the recent Eastern and Central European revolutions against totalitarianism, according to Czech Sylvestrova and her American colleague Bartelt, curators of the Smithsonian traveling exhibition that this volume accompanies. Unlike the other highly censored media, hand-painted and privately printed posters could express the people's intense anger and longing for freedom. Some of the dynamic images in the posters represented here are visual barbs at despised leaders: Romanian ex-dictator Ceausescu portrayed as a vampire and Lenin as a devil. A hollowed-out loaf of bread in one poster and a Bible with its pages ripped out in another illustrate the lack of both physical and spiritual sustenance under Communism. The images are complemented by gripping prose and poems: a Polish poster labeling a Russian tank ``car of the year'' accompanies Ryszard Kapuscinski's description of the ideal modern coup d'etat, which captures the television station rather than the palace. This work is both a celebration of poster art and a testimony to the courage of those who tore down the Iron Curtain. (June)