Art and Lies

Another catch-up blargh post: a book review, written for The Brooklyn Rail back in August. Today is a day of catch-up, sifting through the drifts of crumpled paper on my desk, re-stocking the refrigerator, enrolling in retirement plans, setting up savings accounts, paying bills, giving the web sites I still work on (including this one!) long-overdue attention.

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Steven Heller's Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State (Phaidon, 2008)
Few symbols grab and hold our attention like the swastika. The symbol has deep roots—it has been used by virtually every major civilization and dates back to at least 3000 BC. Even though the swastika is one of mankind’s oldest symbols, its grip on our imagination today is entirely due to its forceful association with the Nazi party.

In The Swastika: A Symbol Beyond Redemption?, Steven Heller wrote, “I find the swastika to be representative of how line, shape, mass, and color can be influential on popular perception when manipulated to serve an idea and promoted vociferously as a brand.” Heller writes the “Visuals” column for the New York Times Book Review where he also served as art director for almost three decades. He writes authoritatively and often on design in Print magazine and i.d. and has, in the last decade, increasingly turned his attention to the role of design in politics. In his latest book, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State, Heller reconsiders the branding of the Nazi party, as well as the iconography and propaganda of the last century’s other major totalitarian governments: the Italian Fascists, the Russian Soviets, and the Chinese Communists.

The rest: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/07/express/art-and-lies.