How have designers and artists responded to the rise of the right and to fascism in the past? This is the focus of this essay but before we get into an analysis of some examples of graphic responses to the politics of the right, we need to tease out some issues that emerge from consideration of the meanings evoked by historical objects. To do so let us reflect on a poster by John Heartfield produced in Berlin in 1930: Who Reads Fake News Becomes Blind and Deaf. Away with the Stupid Bandages! A photomontage for AIZ (Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung). Heartfield is responsible for a number of ground-breaking and influential photomontages that merit closer study (for those not familiar with his work see The Official John Heartfield Exhibition ).
What are the different approaches that can be adopted towards the meaning of an artefact such as this? We might adopt a historical approach that focuses on what Heartfield intended this poster to mean, and the issues he wanted to address. This is not straightforward, as we no longer inhabit the same communicative environment as Heartfield. Consequently, as an English speaking UK citizen of the 21st Century I am not familiar with the differences between the two newspapers featured in the montage, Tempo and Vorwärts. Neither am I familiar with the differences between these two newspapers and the magazine AIZ, in which the photomontage is featured. I am not well versed in the attire of German workers of the time, or what the purpose of the harness is that the subject appears to be wearing. An investigation into the historical context underpinning the creation and production of this work is obviously an important and vital project, that might help establish the range of meanings this artwork evoked at the time it was disseminated, and perhaps what Heartfield’s communicative intentions were.
Notwithstanding this though there is another approach that I might take. Although I may be relatively ignorant of the precise circumstances surrounding this artwork, it is still meaningful to me. The meanings I make from the visual cues it provides may, or may not, correspond with Heartfield’s communicative intentions, but perhaps an indication of Heartfield’s genius is that the meanings his work evokes can transcend the times in which they were made by retaining a relevance to a different (although not dissimilar) range of political, technological, and cultural circumstances.
The approach in this essay is therefore personal, subjective, and informed by contemporary 21st Century understanding. It is based on the prevailing knowledge held in the cognition of one individual, at one moment in time. Importantly, this is not presented as connoisseurship; this is not a question of what this artefact does mean, what it did mean, or what it is supposed to mean, but simply what it means now to one individual who attended to the artwork for a certain period of time. Neither are these meanings presented as unique, or definitive; hopefully, the meanings described below will resonate with others who have had similar experiences, yet these meanings may be legitimately contradicted or elaborated by others who experience the photomontage differently.
I would imagine that for many who experience an object from history, this is the likely nature of their meaning making activity. They do not research the object, though perhaps they might read a caption in a book or art gallery, but rather meanings are evoked in a largely unconscious, automatic way that is emotional as well as rational, but which will also involve a degree of conscious effort linked to the level of attention that is given over to studying the historical object. Just because an object from the past is experienced in the present, this does not mean that all of its historical significance is stripped away however. The person experiencing the object is likely to have some knowledge of the past in which the object was made. It may be that this knowledge is simplistic or simply wrong, but nonetheless it has the potential to contribute to the meaning that they make in the present, along with any new knowledge, understanding, values, and so forth, that either did not exist, or were not as prevalent as they are today.
Historians, linguists, and anthropologists, among others, are familiar with such issues. Gadamer (1975), for example, considers how both a contemporary horizon and a historical horizon can be reconciled by an interpreter in a ‘fusion of horizons’. In linguistics there is a choice that can be made between synchronic and diachronic perspectives (de Saussure, 1972) depending on whether a phenomenon is studied at a particular moment in time, or over its history. For those, like myself, who find this debate interesting there are a number of positions that seem relevant (see Appadurai 1986; Hunt, 2002; Jauss, 1982; Ricoeur, 1981) but in order to avoid deviating from the focus of this essay I will not explore them at any greater depth here.
Does this lead to a situation in which an artwork can mean just anything, depending on the individuals that make the meanings? No, because we do not randomly assign meanings to artefacts, there is a process in which we use our bodies and brains to construct meanings (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; Faucconier and Turner, 2002). Some of this happens unconsciously and automatically, and because we have similar bodies and brains and are brought up in a cultural community of one kind or another, we might expect to produce meanings which, if not identical, are frequently at least broadly similar.
Consequently, in the descriptions that follow, rather than just listing meanings that an artwork evokes for me, there is a focus on cognitive activity which might explain how these meanings are resolved. From here it seems appropriate to reflect on the processes and meanings evoked by Heartfield’s photomontage in more depth, and to consider how it might resonate with the rise of the populist right in the early 21st century.
To come: Who reads fake news becomes blind and deaf…