Pleasing propaganda

Those who lived under communist regimes might have a hard time ever perceiving the propaganda of the times as art, but a new exhibition of posters from Vietnam at the National Gallery undermines that assumption.

The exhibition at the Veltržní palác branch of the National Gallery runs through Jan. 30 and features more than 100 posters created under communist rule, all hand-painted.

"During the war, there was no way they could print them, so each one [was] done by hand," said Ottaviano Maria Razetto, one of the two collectors of the posters and vice president of the Eleutheria Foundation, which helped organize the exhibition. "Basically, one artist created the original, and then this first poster was shown to 10 or 20 other people who then copied it to create an identical version of it."

Responsibility for the bold and bright designs depicting proud workers and soldiers was often left up to individual artists. The images were then paired with government-mandated slogans. Most of the artists were students of fine arts schools in Hanoi and Gia Dinh, according to Richard Asianari di San Marzano, the curator of the Dogma collection, one of the largest collections of North Vietnamese propaganda art and the source of more than 20 original works in the exhibition.

"It was never controlled in the way propaganda art was controlled in China, North Korea, Russia or Nazi Germany. These [North Vietnamese] artists signed their work, which didn't occur in other places, and what's very interesting is to see the individualism in their work," he said.

Contrary to propaganda art under other totalitarian regimes, the Vietnamese posters are infused with deeply personal art styles and symbolism unique to specific artists, who for the most part did the work willingly and passionately, San Marzano said.

"Their whole nation was under attack. They were under constant bombardment from the end of World War II until the Chinese invasion in 1979. That has to be one of the strong underlying reasons for the freshness and purity, and often charming naiveté, in some of the compositions," he said, adding that propaganda under other communist regimes was for the most part mass-produced to maintain stability during times of peace. 

The fine arts schools were originally established when Vietnam was a French colony during the 1920s, and remained in use even after the split of Vietnam into the North and South in 1964. On the advent of the Vietnam War - or the American War as it is referred to in Vietnam - the communist regime set up an information bureau and set to the task of creating propaganda that would appeal to the uneducated rural populations.

"These artists and art students were primarily caught up in the patriotic idealism. ... The great majority of them were more than happy to work and make a contribution in the form of these vibrant artworks," San Marzano said.

The themes of the posters might carry a certain bitterness for those raised under the Czechoslovak totalitarian regime, acknowledged Tomáš Vlček, director of modern and contemporary art for the National Gallery. 

"The fact is it was an absolutely terrible, horrible historic moment," he said. "[But] it is reasonable to look at the Vietnamese posters and learn something about them and reflect."

Beyond the symbolic and cultural currents, the actual artistic technique in the posters bridges ancient tradition with modern pop culture, Vlček said. In the brush strokes, there are traces of ancient Chinese calligraphy ink work, but at the same time, the colors and characters depicted are reminiscent of the pop art of the 1950s and 1960s.

"There are images from the Vietnam War with the United States that play so much on the psyche of the world. You can see it in this powerful rock 'n' roll culture that was created at that time," San Marzano said. "Scenes from Vietnam still seem exotic and a little unusual to people, and I think they find these posters refreshingly surprising when they see them."

The collection is the largest in Europe, and the second largest in the world, according to Razetto, who collected the bulk of the works on display during trips to Vietnam with his brother.

"My first trip to Vietnam was in 2007, and I went out of pure curiosity to see the country," Razetto said.

At the time, Razetto was interested in socialist propaganda but had never encountered North Vietnamese work.

"I was just walking by a shop selling posters, and I went in and fell in love with it, and that started my work in this field. I started researching and collecting. ... It's an unknown type of art that deserves more consideration than it has gotten until now," he said.

Indeed, the exhibition actually follows a trend of increasing popularity for such posters, according to Razetto. Earlier this year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City featured a similar exhibition from a different collection, and Razetto said he is in talks with some major institutions outside of Prague for further exhibitions.

Cat Contiguglia can be reached at
ccontiguglia@praguepost.com