How Posters Helped Shape America and Change the World
One enthusiast's collection, on exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California, offers a sweeping look at grass-roots movements since the 1960s
- By Jeff Greenwald
- Smithsonian.com, May 23, 2012
(Mark Morris, The Philadelphia Resistance Press, Anti-Draft Week: March 16-22, 1970. Collection of the Oakland Museum of California, All Of Us Or None Archive. Gift of The Rossman Family)
Cushing compares the process of selecting the posters for All of Us or None to “sipping water from a fire hose.” A significant part of Rossman’s enormous collection addressed one of America’s deepest fault lines: the Vietnam War and the related bombings of Cambodia and Laos. The year this poster was printed, more than 6,000 Americans—and some 25,000 Vietnamese—died in the conflict. “Until 1968,” notes Cushing, “even Martin Luther King Jr. avoided condemning the Vietnam War. It was when he saw images of the victims of napalm that he decided he had to take a stand. One of the tools a graphic artist uses to undermine the arguments for the war is to show victims like villagers and children. If you want to pull out all the stops, showing the human cost of the war is a very good tool.”
Comments (4)
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT All of the posters included are (at least were in their own day) clearly expressive of left-of-center views. Discuss.
Posted by Berel Dov Lerner on February 24,2013 | 02:49 AM
Stanley is a very talented guy. His dad worked in the Disney studios. I had never seen this one before. Great image.
Posted by Mary Miller on December 6,2012 | 10:08 AM
I love seeing all these posters. very inspiring and memory-provoking. just one small "correction" for Cushing ---- Martin Luther King came out against the war in Vietnam in April 1967, during major anti-war protests in NYC and SF. Still, cushing's point is well-taken ---- it took a few years for opposition to the war to build up....and it took a few years for civil rights leaders to link their own cause with the anti-war movement.
Posted by bill cohen on May 30,2012 | 09:26 AM
This is a terrific exhibit about a very interesting time - well worth seeing if you're in the Bay Area, along with the companion 1968 exhibit. Many of the artists in the poster exhibit choose to produce their work anonymously, and unfortunately this allowed interlopers to insert themselves into the history of at least one of the groups, claiming the legacy of others. Sad, but this doesn't take away from the significance of the work displayed in the exhibit.
Posted by Peggy White on May 25,2012 | 04:15 PM