Multiple Iconographies: Political Posters in the Iranian Revolution

Social upheavals and revolutionary struggles often give rise to innovative forms of political artistic expression. In order to build “insurgent consciousness,” this art talks back to power, subverts its authority, and proposes alternative, oppositional ways of thinking and behavior. In times of turmoil, when hegemony is at best constricted, this art engages in the construction of new symbols, countermyths, and, ultimately, new meanings.
The political posters that were produced and disseminated during the Islamic Revolution in Iran were no exception. Created by artists committed to the Revolution, these posters clearly set out to redefine social values and norms, and to produce what François Fubert has called “a new mystique,” at once liberating and envisioning a blissful future. As the Shah’s authority diminished, engaged artists produced 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 struggle for change and in the articulation of collective ideology In this sense, the Revolution and its art were mutually constitutive....