Episode 71: Welcome To The Resistance

Ever notice how the first targets in a crackdown are painters, poets, designers, and musicians?

We unpack why creativity terrifies the powerful and how images, jokes, and typography can loosen the grip of official narratives. From Plato’s plan to expel poets to Osip Mandelstam’s lethal epigram about Stalin, we follow the thread of art’s subversive power and the real risks makers take when they refuse to look away.

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Transcript

Art As A Threat To Power

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, hey you want to start a revolution. They come for the artists first. They always have. Why? Because art is dangerous. That is its job. Art poses a threat to systems. Art poses a threat to the status quo. Art poses a threat to capitalism, to corporate systems, to political systems. Because art reminds you, the individual, of their autonomy and their humanity. And that scares the shit out of people in power. And across history and across cultures, governments suppress artists because we put meaning to our descent and we expose injustice. We mobilize, even trigger public sentiment. Sentiment that the public at large didn't even know they had until they saw our work or read our work or heard our music. We challenge official narratives because we speak a different language. We have a subversive language of subtlety, of nuance, and deceptively simple imagery. Even just color can be political and threatening. So we reach a wide audience beyond traditional political channels. So I love talking about this subject. I could go on for hours and days, maybe some coffee and bread along the way. But I want to start this in 400 BCE, which would be about 2,400 years ago. Plato argued in The Republic that poets should be expelled from the ideal state. Why? Because art and poetry moves people in ways that laws cannot. Those are almost his words. Because art, poetry, and music is an invitation to understanding. And sometimes one poem can be enough. So there's this little-known story of this Russian poet, Osip Mendelstam, and he wrote a poem mocking Joseph Stalin. It wasn't a weapon, it wasn't an attack or an army, it was a poem. And for that poem, Mendelstam died in a labor camp. So I'm going to read to you a translation of Ossip Mendelstam's poem from 1933. It's called Stalin's Epigram. And this poem has been translated and retranslated a number of times because, you know, scholars like to like to argue. This one is by Scott Horton, okay? Put on my poetry voice. We live not sensing our own country beneath us. Ten steps away they dissolve. But where enough meat for half conversation, the Kremlin hillbilly is our preoccupation. They're like slimy worms, his fat fingers, his words as solid as weights of measure. In his cockroach mustache there's a hint of laughter, while below his top boots gleam. Around him a mob of thin necked henchmen. He pursues the enslavement of half men. One whimpers, another warbles, a third meows, but he alone prods and probes. He forges decree after decree like horseshoes, in groins, in foreheads, in eyes and eyebrows. His executions are like cake and ale. His broad chest of ossette eclipses the jail. Who does that sound like? It's so funny how art reverberates over time, how art repeats itself as does history. Who does that sound like? Listen, these fucks in power, whether it's Stalin or somebody else, mouth breathing idiots in power, have no sense of humor. But in humor there is truth. A joke is not the truth. A joke is a lie to illuminate the truth. You know, contemporary Chinese artist I Weiwei has been hounded by Chinese authorities, detained repeatedly because his work exposes corruption and state violence. He even gets in trouble for questioning Chinese history. Something that's coming up in our culture every day. You know, his sculptures, his work function like mirrors. And mirrors make power uncomfortable. They hate to see themselves because they know how ugly their version of the truth is. And power fears what it cannot control. I mean, we know that with, you know, under Hitler, modern artists were labeled degenerate. They were banned and harassed and exiled, even killed. You know, the greats like Paul Clay or Otto Dix or Vasily Kandinsky. Their work was confiscated and destroyed because it challenged the mythology of the state. It didn't romanticize German history. It didn't try to make them look good. You know, I could go on and on with stories of poets and artists creating beautiful, moving, and subtle works that scared the pants off of authority. Hell, even a list of artists whose mere presence confounded and rattled the Puritan cages of society. From Oscar Wilde to Alan Ginsburg, even Bad Bunny. He's largely considered the father of the modern poster. And in 1983, Poland was under martial law, right? It was under communist rule and under martial law. And the communists, fearing an uprising led by the dock worker turned activist Lek Wales and his solidarity movement, outlawed the victory sign, the two-fingered V, you know, the peace sign. They outlawed that. That was the symbol of the revolution. You would literally get their version of ice on your ass for raising the peace sign with your two fingers. Now check this out. One night, under the cover of darkness, a theater poster for a play quietly mocking the authorities appeared on the streets of Warsaw. And the central image was the victory sign. But it didn't show a hand with two fingers. It was a big green foot with two big toes up. The designer wasn't a young rebel or a would-be politician. He was Henrik Tomashewski at sixty-nine years old, doing what we do and doing it beautifully. Because what art really does is invites interpretation and not instruction. And encourage us to feel rather than to obey. Or comply even. Art sparks self-reflection. It makes us it makes us ask ourselves important questions instead of just being passive consumers. It returns us to ourselves. It invites introspection. But systems function more smoothly when people outsource their thinking. That's the problem. Here's one of my favorite analogies. And I've written this before, so I'm going to read it now. But I love this story. I wrote about this in my first coffee table book in Victoria or Who Died and Made You Boss. Check this out. In 1517, the priest Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany. His protest profoundly altered Western Christianity. In these papers, Luther openly criticized the Catholic Church, calling them corrupt for the practice of selling plenary indulgences, which gave the wealthy the ability to buy freedom from purgatory and God's punishment. Very much like a Trump pardon, you know, where you can storm the Capitol, kill and hurt a bunch of police, get sent to jail, get out of jail free, and then run for office, and then molest children and get sent back to jail. Now the interesting part comes when you consider Martin Luther, a priest, a monk, as an activist and a designer. Combining his love for the truth and desire to elucidate it, and that's the first line of his theses, out of the love for the truth and desire to elucidate it, combining that with the mechanical reproduction available at the time, because Gutenberg's press was invented in the 1430s, Luther printed and distributed pamphlets complete with illustrations by his friend, the German printmaker and engraver Lucas Cranick the Elder. Luther knew the majority of the population could not read, but they did understand pictures. Cranich illuminated the words with biting and satirical images, such as depicting the Pope as the whore of Babylon. Very quickly, Luther's theses were reprinted and spread throughout Europe, thus beginning the Protestant Reformation, the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther was excommunicated from the church and proclaimed an outlaw by the state. Later he wrote, I would never have thought such a storm would rise from Rome over one simple scrap of paper. The power of ink on paper, people. The power of ink on paper. Hey, listen, here's the part we don't talk about enough. Here's the part we don't talk about enough. Artists don't get silenced only by governments. We silence ourselves. Why? Because neutrality is profitable. I've always told my students, hey, you want to make a lot of money in this business? Never have a fucking opinion. Just say yes to everybody. Because brands like neutrality. Corporations like neutrality. Clients love neutrality. Neutrality pays. But sitting on the fence never changes anything. Social responsibility isn't reserved for politicians. It belongs to anyone who gives a damn. We just happen to have the tools. And if you want to change the world, you don't need permission. You need courage. You may need community and possibly some strategy and to share resources. And more importantly, to know that your work matters and your voice matters. Here is an invitation. I am gathering a community of brave citizens, mothers, fathers, students, even designers, who want to turn their rage into protest, who want to use typography and imagery and symbol and story as instruments of change. And who want to prove to themselves and to the world that their work and their words and their ideas matter. And to prove that equality, inclusion, abundance, diversity, and freedom are not antiquated ideas. They are unfinished work. If you are interested, join me in my live online workshop called Graphic Activism. We will share our courage, share our resources. We will create work that carries the fucking torch. There's a waiting list with a link in my Instagram bio. Let me know if you're there. And welcome to the Resistance.