Iranian Revolutionary Posters

During the 20th century, ideological conflicts were often accompanied by vast outpourings of mass-produced images created with the specific intent to mobilize. Indeed, social upheavals and revolutionary struggles often give rise to innovative forms of political artistic expression. Posters produced and disseminated during the Islamic Revolution in Iran were no exception. Engaged artists created posters whose iconography opposed and inverted ideas and images that supported the status quo. Not just a secondary reflection of the revolutionary movement, these posters played a vital role in the struggles for change and in the articulation of collective ideologies.

Although the Iranian Revolution culminated in an Islamic state, as Haggai Ram notes, its impetus, motivations, iconographies, and messages were multifarious. This diversity is reflected in the revolutionary posters on display in Between Word and Image. While the posters were produced by a wide range of political groups, most make direct appeals to action by defying power, subverting authority, and inverting icons as a means to authorize oppositional ways of thinking and behavior. In one poster, the Shah's oil regime becomes a weapon of its own destruction. An oil derrick stands in for the hilt of a dagger plunging through the United States–supported Pahlavi crown. In another poster, the Revolution is visualized as a red arrow that is aimed at a blissful future, exemplified by a red sun. First, however, the revolutionaries must overcome three forces, represented by columns. The revolutionary arrow has already broken through the first column, on which the Pahlavi crown teeters precariously. The second column is marked "internal reaction" and upholds a silhouette of the Shah's profile. Uncle Sam's top hat sits atop the third column, which is labeled "imperialism."

As social discontent increased throughout the 1970s, some of Iran's leading contemporary artists assumed an active role in the production of political posters. Inspired by the French student movement of 1968, a group of Iranian artists opened a workshop at the University of Tehran in 1978. The workshop provided the materials and equipment for printing posters to members of various political groups. Professional artists worked alongside amateurs. Their results were displayed throughout Tehran—in schools, in factories, and on the walls of other buildings, often defacing public monuments built by the Pahlavi regime as symbols of its authority and grandeur. As government agents tore them down or covered them with paint, protesters would replace them with replenished supplies.

One active member of the poster workshop was Morteza Momayez, whose works are also represented in the Grey Collection. His posters clearly display the fusion of symbolism that marked Iranian modern art in this period. In one, three red tulips in the shape of clenched fists are topped with an excerpt from a poem that reads, "Tulips have blossomed from the blood of the nation's youth." The poster reveals the multifarious influences propelling Momayez's revolutionary message: the symbol of the American civil rights movement (the raised fist) merges with an icon from classical Persian literature (the tulip). Persian poetry, which is cited frequently in the posters, provides the defiant slogan.

As Ram suggests, Iranian revolutionary posters became a site of an "insurgent consciousness." The posters displayed in Between Word and Image provide visual testimony to the heterogeneity of the Revolution's cultural, social, and political concerns. Referencing Shiism, they also incorporate messages from a variety of other sources, including Marxism, to create subversive and, at times, contradictory political messages.