Content note. Propaganda art includes caricature of enemies and of ethnic and religious groups, and appeals to hatred, from every side. Items are shown as issued, as evidence of what was said to the public. Showing an item is not endorsing it.
What is propaganda art?
Propaganda art is any image made to move an audience toward a belief or an act: posters, cartoons, prints, paintings, murals, banknote and stamp designs, and banners. It is defined by purpose and sponsor, not by style or quality. A work can be fine art and still be propaganda if it was made to serve a campaign, and the same artists often worked in both modes.
The forms it takes
- Posters are the largest group in the collection. See the propaganda posters page for how to read them.
- Cartoons and prints reach readers through newspapers and magazines, and use caricature to attach a label to a person or group (Name-calling).
- Paintings, murals and banners carry the same messages in public places. Soviet "socialist realism", adopted as the official artistic doctrine in 1934, is the best-known state-directed style; other states and parties commissioned art in their own styles.
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- Hand-painted windows and street art. The Soviet ROSTA windows of 1919 to 1921 were hand-stencilled news posters in shop windows, and later street art has served both protest and state campaigns.
- Money and stamps put a message into daily life through objects people handle and cannot avoid.
Why artists and sponsors matter
Famous images are often collaborations between a sponsor with an aim and an artist with a style. James Montgomery Flagg's 1917 "I Want You for U.S. Army" and Alfred Leete's 1914 Kitchener recruiting image are the usual examples from the First World War, and posters of the same kind appeared in Germany, France, Russia and Italy in the same years (WW1 posters by country). The archive records the issuer, date and source of each item, and applies the same questions to every side (how to spot propaganda).
Seeing the techniques in the art
Most propaganda art uses a small set of devices: a symbol carried onto a cause (Transfer), a threat to provoke fear (Fear appeal), a crowd to suggest everyone agrees, and a single striking figure. The types of propaganda page lists them, and the grid below shows cartoons, prints and artworks from the collection.
Sources and further reading
Sources
Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion (Sage).
Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion (Sage). Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee, The Fine Art of Propaganda (Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1939). Items in the grid carry their own source and rights notes.
