“Propaganda or Propaganda?” Exhibition Opens In Downtown Oswego

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Oswego State Downtown recently opened its summer exhibition “Propaganda –or– Propaganda?” featuring original undergraduate student work. The public is invited to a reception to meet the artists on Wednesday, June 11 from Noon to 2:00 pm. The event will also feature a talk by Professor John Kares Smith who will speak about “‘Hocus Pocus’ and Persuasion: the Absolute Necessity of Political Propaganda.” Refreshments and snacks will be served.

The spring exhibition, which continues through August 17, features “Pro” and “Con” portraits of the front-running presidential candidates created by beginning, intermediate, and advanced undergraduate students studying digital illustration under the direction of Professor Cynthia Clabough. To prepare work for this exhibition, students from SUNY Oswego’s Art Department actively researched the political discourse surrounding John McCain, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Ralph Nadar. As part of their assignment, each student had to create two posters, one that presented their candidate in a positive light, and another that painted the candidate in a negative light. Students were actively encouraged to thoroughly research their candidate in order to prepare visual arguments based on candidate records and accomplishments. “In keeping with the historical role of the political poster or editorial illustration, the assignment stressed the need to give social and political forms visual shape,” noted Clabough. Unlike artists in the field, students had to take the role of both the propaganda artist as well the political satirist.

The range of portraits on exhibition provides opportunity for the viewer to see the presidential race as a spectacle of visual and verbal rhetoric, a flurry of discussion that either criticizes the present, or glorifies the past/future. The aim of each artist was to create and implement representations (mental, verbal, pictorial, dramatic) of the current national scene with the thinking that this visual depiction can influence, and thereby change society. “Each artist also understood that, whether affirmative or challenging, the purpose of his or her work was to visualize the discourse surrounding that person, to characterize and constitute the candidate’s persona while persuading the viewer to feel a certain way,” explained Clabough.

During the opening reception, well-known speaker and writer John Kares Smith will talk of the history of propaganda in the west, from the corruption of the Catholic Eucharist service, to the various distinctions made between an honesty-inspired persuasion and an everyday propaganda. Related books on current politics are available at the River’s End Bookstore, located across the street from Oswego State Downtown.

All Oswego State Downtown store events are free and open to the public. Hours are Wednesday 12–5, Thursday 10–8, Friday 10–5, Saturday 11–5. For additional information about this exhibition and for persons with disabilities needing assistance to visit the exhibition, call 312-2111.

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