Wednesday 28 December 2011

Thursday 22 December 2011

Saturday 10 December 2011

Hitler satire in Ukraine

A Hitler billboard, protesting about a Stalin statue, in Ukraine. Not caricature, but interesting satire.


Russian Street Art

Interesting article on a street artist involved with the anti-Putin demonstrations, with some good visuals.

Friday 9 December 2011

Post-election use of caricature in Putin fight-back

Very interesting article on Time Magazine's website including a reference to a deck of cards, produced by the Kremlin, with caricatures of the opposition leaders on the Jokers. Fascinating retaliatory use, creating a caricature war. I'd quite like a set of these cards, but in the meantime, there are some great images online.

These decks of cards have been handed out to supporters, turned into sandwich boards and worn around Moscow, turned into placards and taken on rallies, and now posted online.









Images via: http://demidov-anton.livejournal.com/68581.html

Very interesting phenomenon. Comes so close to Putin's accusations of US meddling in Russian elections, for one thing. For another thing, the caricatures are satirical, but not as biting as some of the anti-Putin imagery (not that they were especially vicious, especially compared with Krokodil). There are a large number of references to Russian/Soviet historical personalities in these images, which would be fascinating to analyse. It also reveals some interesting attitudes to the power of caricature. There may have been other instances as well, but this is reminiscent of the USA's use of the deck of cards analogy for those wanted for involvement with humanitarian crimes in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

29/1/12
More articles on the same theme here and here.

Krokodil and Russian folklore

Krokodil cartoons very often employed folkloric characters and themes. Soviet graphic satire owed much to pre-revolutionary popular prints...