The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
"[An old-fashioned notion whose name somehow escapes us] Forever"

Artist Mary Patten remembers her collaborative work on a "victory" mural in NYC in early May 1975:

Leftist artists freely borrowed from each other in those days, across cultures and languages, dipping into a shared vocabulary of fists, dragons, masses, AK-47s, and metaphors of social transformation like the bleeding rose. Sometimes design ideas were lifted wholesale. . . .

The Cubans themselves borrowed from North American advertising, pop art, and from revolutionary artists such as the Black Panther    Party's    Emory    Douglas.

None of this was seen as post-modern appropriation, or a subversion of intellectual property rights, but as solidarity; an assumed collective ownership of revolutionary ideas and methodologies.

(emphasis supplied)

The above appears in Patten's informative, thoughtful and riveting booklet, Revolution as An Eternal Dream: The Exemplary Failure of the Madame    Binh Graphics Collective, which recently appeared in conjunction with a tremendous exhibition.

An example of the mid-70's work of some of Patten's colleagues in the community murals movement remains visible today, as photographed here and here.

After the above cited passage jumped out at us, TiR was somehow unsurprised to discover that Patten has published some additional developed thoughts on certain aspects of this mysterious notion,    here.

posted by TiR at 7:01 AM