Graphic design isn’t usually my focus, but when you’re interested in design and are living amidst the deluge of an impending Olympics in your hometown, the tide of graphics is impossible to ignore. Here’s a small sample of political cartoons and posters that incorporate the various Olympic logos – the standard logo with the five rings, as well as the Vancouver 2010 “Inukshuk” logo. (For controversy about the Inukshuk logo see here.) Above is Corey Rollins’ poster about Vancouver’s famous drug and prostitution problem (at left), which is based on the official Vancouver 2010 logo (at right). Rollins also did the healthcare poster below, and the taser shirt too, I think, but I’m having trouble verifying that. I’ll add more graphics to this post as I collect them, just in order to keep them all in once place, so check back if you’re interested. The issues being addressed in these graphics, as you can see, are homelessness and eviction, Vancouver’s infamous drug problem (which is sort of headquartered a few blocks from the stadiums and Olympic village, not to mention my studio), appropriation of First Nations’ imagery and land, environmental destruction, corporate/real estate development, debt, police action, suppression of free speech (Google “Free Speech Zones”), corporate perq’s and all of the other problems that generally accompany an Olympic Games. Being saddled with an Olympics during an economic downturn is no doubt increasing Vancouver’s level of unrest even further. Before you imagine that these are all overreactions, consider this: there is BC legislation waiting to be passed that could mean a 10,000 fine and/or jail time for anyone putting up an anti-Olympics sign in the window of his/her own house, under which law police will have the right to enter your home and remove it. I’ve even had elderly women tell me they’re so incensed that they’re planning to put a sign up too. In a surprising and much-appreciated move, though, the Vancouver police (who are really in need of good PR) held a press conference two days ago announcing that they will not enter any house to remove a sign nor will they lay charges. This will win them a lot of fans. Almost all of these graphics were found here. For a post on the official 2010 graphics on this blog, see here. NOTE: I’m not sure why people conclude that political cartoons equal violent protest. They don’t, and it seems to go without saying that trying to repress them stands a much better chance of causing violence than allowing them.

The flag above was produced by artist Kathryn Walter back when Toronto was bidding (unsuccessfully) for a summer Olympics. The artist recently donated the flag to one of the non-profit art centres in Vancouver that has had its funding abruptly cut by the provincial government, just prior to the Olympics. The government has claimed that the Olympic debt has nothing to do with the recent radical cuts to cultural funding in BC but there are doubts. Projected economic benefits of the Games have this year been downgraded from approx 10 billion to just under 4 billion [update - 1 billion], while the cost of the Olympics leapt from 3 or 4 billion to 7 or more billion. For a small province of only 4 million people, that’s a big debt to be carrying, especially on top of the recession-related deficit of billions we were already burdened with.

Above are the 3 Olympic mascots: Sumi, Quaatchi and Miga. Below is a graphic from the Poverty Olympics, “Give 2010 the finger.”

The four political cartoons immdiately below are from the No2010 site – not sure who the artist is. The 5 interconnected handcuffs motif has actually appeared at prior Olympics as well, including Torino and the Chicago bid.

Above, image by Gord Hill, Kwakwaka’wakw & Riel Manywounds, TsuuT’ina/Nak’azdli, June 2007. Below, Wolves by Ange Sterrit, Gitxsan.

I apologize for my continuing semi-absence from this blog. I appreciate your patience and I thought you might enjoy this sign from one of the crafts stalls at the Ferry terminal between Vancouver and Victoria. It seems to represent the current state of the BC Arts Council thanks to the current corporate redneckery that prevails here in BC. I’m the head of a board of directors of an art gallery in BC whose promised funding – not tax dollars but money that comes from gaming (provincial lottery) – has been abruptly retracted, while the arts get cut in a million other ways. All other economic sectors are subsidized, but not culture which puts $5 billion into the BC economy annually? If anyone is interested there is more on this here. I and many others are very busy fighting the government to get that money back. The BC Liberals (misnamed) effectively want to put gaming money – the fruits of gambling – into general revenue, which is sort of what you might expect from a tin-pot dictator. If the treasure chest is empty, it’s because they went massively overbudget on the stupid 2010 Olympics, among other things. Oh, and here’s a misleading, obfuscation-filled letter Minister Krueger sent me today, in error. It’s so fantastic when political leaders accidentally send you the “Track Changes” version of their letters.

After a disastrous week for the arts in British Columbia, this is all I’ve got, a photo of a ruined barn and some statistics.Read this entertaining set of facts about arts and arts workers, what they contribute to the economy, and some serious public misconceptions about the role of the arts. As Kate says in the link above:

Artists are not “fancy”. Art is a hugely important part of our shared culture. Were the cave paintings fancy? Do you like written language? Have you ever seen a movie or worn a nice shirt or walked through a public space?

I hate to make purely economic arguments for supporting the arts, because there are certainly enough compelling social ones, but it seems to be important to make them now. Facts: BC already has the lowest arts funding in Canada, and without warning that funding is reduced from last year’s 47 million to this year’s 19 million to next year’s 3.7 million. The province of Ontario, far more badly hit by recession than BC, increased its arts funding by 130 million this year, because they understand that that stimulus provides a huge proven return on their investment within one year, and that it is especially socially and economically smart in times like these. For every dollar given to the arts in BC, $1.36 is returned to the BC government in direct revenue. You can’t get better safe returns than that these days. Furthermore, when indirect returns and benefits are included, culture’s value-added return to the economy per dollar given is more like $6.00. But BC’s current government and its corporate pals doesn’t see it that way, because they don’t understand public spending. They’re stuck in the very neoclassical anti-regulation economics that have been discredited over and over again, most spectacularly by the recent economic crash. Hey, BC, while we’re at it, let’s dam all our rivers and send the power and water to the US! Let’s drill and put oil tankers down the coast! Let’s unregulate fish farms and contaminate all our wild salmon stock! Let’s allow U.S. seismic testing in whale reserves! The BC Liberals are living in outdated, primary resource extraction, cowboy times, and they’re trying to drag the rest of us back there with them. Recall!

If you’d like to join our Facebook group, it’s here. Want to write a letter? Addresses, fax nos. and sample letters are here. And if anyone knows Chad Kroeger, call him and tell him that Nickelback received massive BC and Canadian arts subsidies to get launched, so it’s time they spoke out and told all those anti-arts Nickelback fans in the Fraser Valley that they’re wrong.

Vancouver curator Scott Watson’s essay Urban Renewal: Ghost Traps, Collage, Condos and Squats is part of the impressive and totally compelling Vancouver Art in the Sixties website project. It’s a well-organized archive of Vancouver’s 1960s art production and it’s far too large a topic for one post. What I found immediately interesting though was Watson’s historical contextualization of residential architecture and interior aesthetics in the 60s, especially its turn away from modernist minimalism and toward more baroque historical styles. He suggests that the Edwardian bric-a-brac and Art Nouveau styles that were adopted by Vancouver’s arts and hippie communities in the 60s were a reaction against the City of Vancouver’s move to demolish the crumbling inner-city Edwardian houses, which housed its art and social protest, and replace them with corporate architectural brutalism and strata-controlled condos. This was no doubt replayed in cities all across North America. Watson’s essay is particularly interesting in light of the current revival of Edwardian/Victorian granny chic in interior design and craft. It seems to me this is revival without any politics, but I could be wrong. In many cases it seems the farthest thing from radical, however you understand that word, but it could also be an echo of a similar problem in urban planning. Photo above by Michael de Courcy shows a screening on December 31, 1969 of a collaborative video at Vancouver’s Intermedia art centre.

The following are excerpts from Watson’s essay (click the link at top for the whole text).

“At the advent of what we now call postmodernism, the doomed Edwardian building inventory that provided bohemia’s living, studio and event spaces also provided an aesthetic opposed to Brutalism, the heavy concrete fortress style of public buildings that had arisen in response to the riots and demonstrations of the 60s. Late Victorian and Edwardian furniture and bric-a-brac furnished communal houses. In these spaces Art Nouveau was revived and deployed to advertise concerts and events. Rejection of the “brutality of the new” was, in essence, a very real concern about the disappearance of places to live, eat, congregate, exhibit and perform. In defnse of a crumbling inventory of modest, poorly built pioneer-era wooden and brick structures, the art community of the day rejected not only the Brutalist idioms of the 1960s and 1970s, but the gentler suburban modernism of the 1940s and 1950s. Or to be more precise, the authoritarian, normalizing, “design for living” modernism, with its unarticulated suppression of libidinal circulation, was an anathema for the generation of the 1960s and 1970s. The hippie movement as appropriated by fashion and popular music adopted Edwardian and Art Nouveau as its style of protest and renunciation of consumer/spectacle society.” [This excerpt was the last paragraph of several excerpts below. Click for more.]

Art Nouveau-influenced Doors poster by Bob Masse, Vancouver, 1967. Below, Bob Masse, William Tell & the Marksmen Great White Light, Vancouver, 1960s.

Will your home be next? Poster by Don Gutstein, poster, Vancouver, 1975

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