Artists and political posters

The fine art of creating a winning design

"Rarely if ever do posters persuade voters to change their minds, except undecided ones, maybe—but they do rally the base,” says Hal Wert, who has written extensively on American political posters [including two books, Hope: A Collection of Obama Posters and Prints (2009) and George McGovern and the Democratic Insurgents (2015)]. "Until Obama, posters created by prominent artists were rarely associated with a winning campaign."

Here's an excerpt from an interview in 2020 with Wert on the Gagosian website:

During the Iowa caucuses, Obama was not picked to win. Searching around on the Internet one night, I saw up near the state capitol building, on the window of the headquarters, this really cool poster. (See below)

So, I called them on the phone the next day and they said, “Well, this really nice man came through and put it up for us.” I said, “Do you know his name?” They didn’t. I said, “All it says on the poster is CRO.”

It was a Ray Noland poster. He didn’t put his name on anything because, like many outsider artists, he wanted anonymity during the campaign. Shepard Fairey came on a little later. But Ray was out there on a skateboard with wheat paste in the middle of the night, slapping up posters. (Which for those paying attention, is Arte Agora!)

So, there are multiple intersections here. First, we have an original Ray Noland, called Run Blago, Run Golden. Dan bought it from Noland in 2010 and we have it framed and hanging in our home.

It is not lost on us that Noland supported Obama with his campaign posters, and then Blago went to prison trying to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat, but that’s a story for another day. The point is, politicians, and the artists that support them, clearly intersect.

For this Presidential election, we did our own take on Arte Agora, election-style.

Above, is an up-close look at two political posters, and below are images of the same two pieces posted outside, a-la-Arte Agora.

The piece on the right, is obviously by Shepard Fairey. On the left, is a mash-up that Dan created thanks to Boeing and Guerrilla Girls. The top part of the left poster is taken from a legal document of a case against Boeing and shows that the red line is a destabilizing force, and the blue one is a stabilizing force. We did not make it up; that's the exact drawing from the legal docs. “Keep Hold” refers to both keeping hold of the vibe of Kamala Harris’ campaign, and it also refs her initials.

If you’re interested, you can download the Guerrilla Girls poster here, or the Shepard Fairey Kamala Harris Forward poster here. For those who really want to get in the weeds, you can find the original source document and lawsuit against Boeing that shows blue as a stabilizing force and red as a destabilizing force.

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