Obama, Becoming Che
Look at these pages from a feature in the South African magazine Design Times and you get a pretty good idea of how rapidly the current President of the United States’ face has has become a mega-icon. It’s a good sign that a person’s features have been firmly implanted into the public store of pop cultural consciousness when designers start playing with it and morphing into other iconic faces, such as that of Lincoln.
All this - from the Pop Art bleach-out abstractions such as the Shepard Fairey “Hope” poster and its various imitators, to the sixties black resistance aesthetic in others, as well as the folk art imagery that accompanies them - - are so very reminiscent of the explosion of Cuban and other art that rapidly began to obsess with Che’s face after the Korda image took off in the wake of Guevara’s death in 1967.
And as with the Che phenomenon, it’s very hard to separate the part of the Obama icon that has organically arisen out of the raw enthusiasm of the masses from that which is encouraged through marketing or propaganda. The Che icon was actively promoted by Cuba and its Brand Manager in Chief, Fidel Castro, to paint his “Revolution” with a sexy image that didn’t match its harsh inequitable reality. Give me Obama over Castro (and Guevara, the armed revolutionary) any day, but look at the output from the “Designers for Obama” group, whose work is featured in the Design Times article, and it’s easy to see a parallel in the way that Obama’s image is being “managed.”
Henry Melito said, May 5,2009, 06:03
Please do not compare Obama to Che —
Obama is not an opportunistic, communist, murderer, and unlike Che, truly represents democracy and freedom.
Che has become an icon out of ignorance and stupidity furthering the stigma carried by Hispanics, that carries the threat, give us something for free or we will revolt. If Che is so great, how come most of those who admire him come from impoverished countries that are full of hate and corruption–ie, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, Columbia or Guatemala.
Why are so many people from those countries trying to come to the US (the country they hate so much) to make a decent living and have FREEDOM?
Che Spotting said, May 5,2009, 12:57
Since the very first time we saw the “Hope” poster by Shepard Fairey, we were thinking that it was a “copy” of the Che image.
We also thought the Obama-Che tie was a strange comparison.
But we’re thinking the artist emulated the Che image on purpose, not to say that the two men were the same, but that the two men had reputations that spread far and wide.
Shepard Fairey would have to speak to that, though.