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.”
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 the background 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?”
Source:
https://aliciapatterson.org/paula-stern/portrait-of-the-artist-palestinian-as-a-political-man/