And yet it moves john heartfield archive#

Traveling in Russia and Central Asia in 1932–33, the German-Jewish portrait photographer Lotte Jacobi produced an extraordinary archive of several thousand photographs documenting Soviet industrialization, collectivization, modernization, and, most profoundly, the revolution's human face. This essay therefore sheds light on what has remained obscured by the political history of the interwar and postwar years. An overlooked detail in this story is the role that Heartfield's brother Wieland Herzfelde played in expanding the reception of Heartfield's work among Spanish and French graphic artists in 1931. Consequently, Münzenberg formed a transnational network that relied unintentionally on the various publishers and illustrated magazines that imitated the AIZ or the graphic artists who reproduced Heartfield's montages in the name of pro-Soviet sympathy and antifascist solidarity. The collaboration between the Comintern's minister of propaganda for western Europe and this avant-garde artist led to the fusion of the international reputation of Heartfield's photomontages and of Münzenberg's Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ) in 1929. Wake up before it’s too late and you have dreamt your way into oblivion.This essay posits that the tactical alliance in the mid-1920s between Willi Münzenberg and John Heartfield shaped the imagery of a united political front for the Communist International (Comintern). It is only those who are asleep who let this happen over and over. “The ‘American dream’ does not include wreaking violence with weapons of mass destruction upon our neighbors.

“This image serves to remind us that humanity is being crucified daily throughout the world-at fast-food joints in Southern California, at children’s schools, at office buildings, in shopping-center parking lots, at suburban cinemas near Denver, at rock shows in Paris, at country-music festivals in Las Vegas, and on, and on, and on. For this collaboration, Smith took inspiration from one of his own most famous pieces, the 1981 album cover of the Dead Kennedys’ In God We Trust, Inc. Smith is perhaps the most legendary of 20th- and 21st-century American collage artists, and for good reason: his work has adorned the covers of magazines such as the New Yorker, as well as albums for artists such as Green Day and George Carlin.

Though some used Heartfield’s works as direct inspiration for their own pieces, all were influenced by his flair for marrying the tragic, comic, and bracingly uncomfortable. “My grandfather understood that one of the strongest tools of fascism was propaganda, the unchallenged ability to distribute nonsense in the media to discredit facts.” (The younger Heartfield built and maintains an online exhibition devoted to the work of his grandfather.)įor our November issue, Topic joined forces with artist Michael Tunk (the artist behind this story’s lead image, which he titled “Well Done”) and asked 11 other contemporary creators to submit political collages commenting on the current political climate in the United States. Courtesy of and copyright by the Heartfield Community of HeirsĬalled “the greatest political artist and graphic designer of the 20th century” by the late British art collector, historian, and graphic designer David King, Heartfield’s photomontages were not just reactions to fascism, but warnings-“road maps,” says his grandson, John J. Never Again!, Adolf the Superman, Swallows Gold and Spits Junk, The Executioner and Justice, and War Profiteers and Their Puppets.

And yet it moves john heartfield