Agitprops

San Francisco: Sore Dove Press, 2021. Hirschman, Jack. 16mo. (11)ff. One of eight copies. A selection of postcard-sized art prints by Hirschman, all signed on the verso by him. Hirschman was a Beat poet, who was passionate about the anti-war and Black liberation movements, and the prints represent a sampling of a larger project by him: from 1976 to 1988, he, by his own account, gave away thousands of such works as an artistic effort to match the state propaganda machines of the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Each has a statement of support ("Solidarity El Salvador," "Solidarity Haiti," etc.) and a statement of defiance ("No Nazis," "No Klan," etc.). Between them are gestural illustrations, names of eminent poetic and political leaders, such as Vladimir Myakovsky and Ho Chi Minh, and Hirschman's portmanteau "Ameryc," a pun on "amorous" that combines "America" and "Russia." The blending of word and image, both abstract and concrete, along with the prolific dissemination of ideas of the original campaign, positions these clever agitprops as political tools all their own. For Hirschman, they aimed to "save the meaning of the Soviet Union" as it was originally conceived. Sheets unbound and housed in a box with paper label. Fine.