Speaker discusses visual propaganda

Graphic-design historian Steven Heller spoke Wednesday night at the Broad Art Center, taking a historical and illustrated look at the use of visual media in totalitarian governments.

Wednesday night’s event was part of a yearlong lecture series presented by the UCLA Design | Media Arts Department. The lecture series, which began in September, aims to link art and design with other fields such as political science, economics and history.

Through organizing events such as these, the Design | Media Arts Department hopes to encourage students to incorporate multiple fields of study into their work, and to pursue many different interests at UCLA.

Heller’s field of study reflects this multidisciplinary ideology, fusing the social sciences with graphic design. Heller is a professor, co-founder and co-chair of the Designer as Author graduate program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and he is the author of several books on graphic design. Previously, he spent 33 years as an art director at the New York Times.

Heller most recently launched his own blog, the “Daily Heller,” for the bimonthly graphic design publication, Print Magazine.

Heller spoke Wednesday night about propaganda art during the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy, and of communist rule in China and Russia.

As Heller shuffled through projections of Adolf Hitler postage stamps, Mao Zedong buttons and fascist schoolbooks, he explained that propaganda strewn across facades of everyday objects ensured that followers maintained a constant, intimate connection with the totalitarian leader.

Heller described how images of Mao were everywhere, in attempts to “revivify his mythic stature.” In addition, Heller spoke about Hitler as a logo.

“Adolph Hitler was deliberately designed to look a part of the crowd, but above it,” Heller said.

Visual media allowed for complete control in the representation of the totalitarian leader, and mediums such as sculpture, painting and the development of the photomontage allowed propaganda creators to portray leaders as divine figures.

Examining a photograph of a Benito Mussolini’s bust, Heller pointed out the sculpture’s piercing stare and enlarged brow bone and chin. Examples of propaganda such as these are examined in Heller’s most recent work, an illustrated book titled “Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State.”

“It’s not a typical book on branding; it’s concept-driven,” said Matthew Manos, a third-year Design | Media Arts student.

Manos has attended some of the previous lectures within the series, and he said after picking up Heller’s book several times in Barnes and Noble, he was interested to hear what Heller had to say.

Third-year film and television student Axel Troy attended because of his interest in media, which began while growing up in Somalia.

Troy attended the event with hopes of meeting other people with similar interests and gaining more knowledge in the field of visual media.

Sarah Ahn, a third-year Design | Media Arts student, said that one of her classes, called Creative Internet, requires that students attend at least two of the lectures.

Although she had no previous knowledge of Heller’s work, Ahn said that these events inspired her to begin looking up visiting lecturers’ works.

She believes that Design | Media Arts professors push students to become more involved with the contemporary design world.

Ahn said she sees the UCLA arts programs such as this lecture series as an opportunity to learn directly from highly regarded figures within the industry.

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