The Spring That Was

EXCERPT

Portrait of the Artist (Palestinian) as a Political Man

Paula Stern

June 23, 1971

“Our revolution is a drop of blood, a drop of sweat, and a drop of ink” asserts a Fateh poster.

So it should not be surprising that Palestinian artists dabble in politics. The best-known

Palestinian artist, Ismail Shammout, for example, speaks of his art work in political terms,

“I’m happy that a landscape of a refugee camp or a tragic theme is hung in the house of rich

people because I do make people remember.”Ismail Shammout in his PLO office

Palestinian studio art was not born from the Palestinian Liberation Movement. But the June

War and the rise of the commando movement re-sensitized Palestinians who are expressing

their national identity by painting as well as skyjacking.

 

Poster art is most obvious. In Beirut, cultural capital of displaced Palestinians, the Fifth of

June Society – it’s name and founding date demonstrate the impact on Palestinian self-

consciousness of the Arab-Israeli War which started June 5, 1967 – raises funds by selling

poster size reproductions of works of Arab artists that appeal to the more sophisticated taste

of wealthy patrons and the Western educated.

 

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the group responsible for last

September’s epidemic of sky-jackings, produces earthier specimens for recruiting posters in

refugee camps. One “Uncle Sam Wants You.” appeal with an oriental twist is pitched to the

family, the basis of Arab society. A determined commando poses clutching his gun; in thebackground his parents stand near a refugee camp; and behind that is a barbed wire

enclosed village. The caption reads: “THIS IS OUR SON. WHERE IS YOURS?”

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