a world to win _ review _ art _ che as revolutionary and icon

8/3/2019 A World to Win _ Review _ Art _ Che as Revolutionary and Icon

1/5

The original Che photograph by Korda 1960

| | | |

Che as revolutionary and

icon

Review Corinna Lotz;

photos Lizzy Clarke

One of the best-known images in history , the

charismatic photo graph of Ernesto Che Guev ara,

taken by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda on

March 5, 1 960 is at the centre of a new show at

Londons Victoria and Albert Museum.

Guev ara co-led the Cuban rev olution with Fidel

Castro in 1959. Eventually he left to c arry on the

struggle in the jungles of Boliv ia, where he was

captured and executed by army forces working to

the order s of the United States gov ernment.

Che Guevaras enduring appeal was recently demonstrated by the succ ess of Brazilian director Walter

Salles film, The Motorcycle Diaries.

The image of Che has mysterious way s of moving, Jonathan Green say s ofChe Guevara: Revolutionary

and Ico n, a collect ion of images showing how Ches image has enchanted mass consc iousness ov er the

last 45 y ears.

Green is directo r o f the UCR/California Museum of Photography at the

Univ ersity of California, Riv erside where the e xhibition began its world tour. In London for the o pening,

he savo ured the parado x o f a multitude of Ches appearing on the walls of the V&A.

There is a great irony in the way that the anti-imperialist images of Che are surro unded here by raped

objec ts from world cultures and societies, he said.

This is a guerrilla show. Embedded in the pop ico nography is the essential

meaning of the image, which is about rebellion and anti-establishment struggle, he said. So it comes in

as a Trojan horse and radiates out in different way s.


2/5

Is Che just being absorbed by capitalist marketing or is it

an indication of the c orporations using his image in a desperate drive to sell ev er more goods to a y oung

market? Green say s: People say that Che is turning ove r in his grave, now that Nike has used the image.

But y ou can read it both ways. Maybe when someone looks down at the logo on their t-shirt, they will ask

who was that guy?

Kordas image has worked its way into languages around the wo rld. It has bec ome an alpha-numeric

symbol, a hierogly ph, an instant symbol. It mysteriously reappears whenever theres a c onflict. There

isnt anything else in history that serv es in this way.

Royalty has long appeared on co ins and banknotes as a symbol of power, Green ex plained. But this was

the first time in history that there was a different kind of symbol that has achiev ed such a mass curr ency

a symbol for opposition to imperialism.

The opening of the show was immersed in controv ersy as curator Trisha

Ziff denounced the V &As barring of her friend Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams from the o pening party.

The image takes on populism and political meaning one cant function without the o ther. The furore in

the press about my personal guest list is symbolic o f that, Ziff says.

In the end y ou cannot take the meaning out of this image. She describes Kordas photograph, taken at amass funeral in Havana, as the classic guerr illero heroico - the heroic guerrilla fighter.


3/5

Y ou cannot dissociate it from radical ideas and change. A museum may be

frightened of that and not wish to support it, but in the end it cant control it. This image will continue to

have that resonance, despite multiple t-shirts, g-strings, bras and badges. In the end there are pe ople inthe world who actually see it as a symb ol of change, of idealism, and they ll wear it for those reasons.

The history of the image is fascinating in itself as it appears and reappears at watershed moments in

Cuban history , beginning with Ches murder o n October 8, 1 967 in Boliv ia." The image became po pular in

Europe during the 1 960s, thanks largely to the efforts o f left-wing Italian publisher, Gian Giacomo

Feltrinelli.

As upheav als swept through Prague and Paris and the civil rights

mov ement arose in Ireland, the image began to take on a new resonance, in relation to y outh mov ements

and political change. Fro m Europe it shifted again to Latin America Nicaragua and El Salv ador and


4/5

resistance to US imperialism in the 1980s, say s Ziff.

Che begins to take on a different iconography as a saint in Latin Americ a, Ziff explained. We have a

section in the show which shows how the Protestant church used the image with its bus stop posters, to

make the c hurch more hip.

Angelina Jolie, Diego Maradonna, Mike Tyson and a whole array of footb all stars have it tattooed o n

their bodies four players at Real Madrid alone.

She describes today s use of the Che image as postmodernity - the epoch in which the content has been

ex tracted from the image - where it is remov ed from its original meaning.

The to-ing and fro-ing of the image resonates with meaning and ideas. We cannot get away from the

context of Che Guevara, whether we like him or hate him, whether we called him a rev olutionary or a

butcher. The fact that he lived and died for the ideas in which he believ ed. That penetrates co nstantly in

the image.


5/5

a world to win _ review _ art _ che as revolutionary and icon

Documents