SAOIRSE32

From the streets of Cuba to the walls of student bedsits, the classic image of the rebel leader is still a bestseller long after his death. Simon Usborne reports on how a single photo launched an industry

The Independent.co.uk
Monday, 5 January 2009

The Che image also speaks of the wider popularity of the communist aesthetic.

Fidel Castro nowhere to be seen, it was left to the ailing Comandante’s brother, Raul, to front last week’s celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. But in Havana’s vast Plaza de la Revolucion, another hero of 1959 was more visible than either Castro. His features, frozen in time for more than 40 years, bolted to the forbidding Ministry of the Interior in the form of a gigantic sculpture, must be among the most recognisable in modern history.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara might not have become so famous were it not for that image. He probably would not be the subject of a four-hour, two-part movie epic directed by Steven Soderbergh: Che: Part One was released on New Year’s Day to coincide with the anniversary of the revolution, the armed communist struggle in which Argentinean Guevara was Castro’s second-in-command.

The film will doubtless cause a spike in demand for Che memorabilia; his likeness has been seen on millions of T-shirts and posters. But there’s also been Gisele Bündchen’s bosom, seen a few years ago supported by a “Che” bikini; Liz Hurley’s Louis Vuitton handbag, embroidered with Che’s face; and the Guevara T-shirt worn by Lindsay Lohan in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.

How did a revolutionary Marxist militant, who died 42 years ago, become a poster-boy for conspicuous consumption and a hipster-friendly logo of radical chic? And how much do Lohan, Hurley, Bündchen, and successive generations of students with wall space to plaster, really know about the man with the flared nostrils, gold-starred black cap and eyes exploding with emotion?

Che had good timing, says David Crowley, a design historian at the Royal College of Art and co-curator of Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970 currently at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. “By the 1960s, the image of revolution in the Communist world had become enervated,” he says. “But the Cuban revolution injected electricity into it. The Che image was very much tied up with that excitement, which was so attractive to radicals in the West.”

Nobody wanted Brezhnev on their T-shirt – but Che was different. Che was hot. But how many of the people who brandish his bearded image on their chests can claim to be “radicals”? At some point in the past 50 years Che idolatry became Che chic. “I think it’s to do with a fetish we have for the 1960s,” Crowley explains. “A fascination with that period runs throughout our culture.”

The Che image also speaks to the wider popularity of the communist aesthetic. Yellow-starred T-shirts in Hanoi, Soviet propaganda posters in Moscow, Mao watches in Beijing; all of the above worn on the streets of London, New York and Tokyo. The trend dates back to the birth of Constructivism in 1920s Russia, a movement in art, design and architecture. “The imagery testifies to a moment when people imagined the future could be better,” Crowley says. “It’s hard to make that claim today, which makes that imagery look even more utopian and attractive.”

The iconic ‘Che’ image has been popularised in Cuba and in Mexico on T shirts (pictured)

Che’s face has become so popular that Crowley sought an alternative to what he calls the famous “overworked image” for the V&A exhibition. The omission might disappoint the man most responsible for its proliferation, Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick. The 65-year-old painter met Guevara as a barman in the early 1960s. Che had stopped off in Ireland on a trip to Moscow to investigate his Celtic ancestry. “He was immensely charismatic,” Fitzpatrick recalls.

Later, Fitzpatrick, then a committed republican and revolutionary, was struck by a snapshot of his hero in the German magazine Stern. Taken at a memorial service in 1960 by Castro’s photographer, Alberto Korda, it had hung largely unseen on Korda’s wall until a radical Italian publisher disseminated it to draw attention to Guevara’s plight; the revolutionary was then leading a doomed rebellion in Bolivia, the country in which he was to be executed, in 1967.

Fitzpatrick decided that, as a poster, the image could have a greater impact, so he created the first red, white and black rendering of the shot. “It was my revenge for Che’s brutal murder,” Fitzpatrick says. “I felt he had been disassembled and would be forgotten. But he was a hero and a Marxist and I felt very strongly that that shouldn’t happen.”

Fitzpatrick prolonged the memory of Guevara but never profited from the image’s ubiquity. Korda, too, relinquished the copyright to his photo, until, in 2000, Smirnoff used it in a Vodka commercial. Korda sued and today both men are trying to pass the copyright for their images – and the huge royalties they would harvest – to a Havana children’s hospital.

Critics of the rebel, who headed up Castro’s notorious firing squads and founded Cuba’s labour camps, insist he was a “cold-blooded killing machine” (a phrase taken from a Guevara’s own description of what was required to achieve a revolution). “You could call it an amnesiac image because it wipes out the problematic aspects of his life,” Crowley says. “When people put a poster on their wall they’re not thinking about how many death certificates he signed.”

Those who deal in the image of Che can expect bumper profits with the release of Soderbergh’s film, which has divided critics the same way the T-shirts do. A telling moment in the epic comes late in the first part, when American journalist Lisa Howard asks Guevara, who had visited New York in 1964 to address the United Nations, “How does it feel to be a symbol?” His response, through a translator, is another question: “A symbol of what?” We’re still waiting for an answer.

Derry Journal
02 January 2009

The long-awaited Police Ombudsman’s report into the 1972 Claudy bombing could be published within weeks.

A spokesperson for the body, headed by Al Hutchinson, said that the document will be released in “the early part of the New Year”.

The probe was launched in 2002 by the first Ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, after police found records of a conversation between the then Secretary of State, William Whitelaw, and Cardinal William Conway, discussing a priest who was suspected of being involved in the atrocity.

The IRA have in the past denied carrying out the triple car-bomb attack which killed nine people, including nine-year-old Kathryn Eakin.

While he was never questioned, historical documents show Fr James Chesney was moved from a south Derry parish to Donegal - where he died in 1980 - after the case was discussed privately by the politician and the clergyman.

A police review was also sparked by an anonymous letter, purportedly coming from a priest - which has never been authenticated - following which the Ombudsman began preparing a report.

The letter, penned by ‘Father Liam’ and sent to a Derry councillor and a journalist, claimed that the priest had confessed his involvement in the attack.

The new report into the atrocity has experienced a number of delays - some of which are thought to be due to new and important information being brought forward.

A spokesperson for the Police Ombudsman said this week: “The investigation has been completed and the report is due out in the early part of the New Year.”

The victims of the Claudy bomb were: Elizabeth McElhinney (59), Joseph McCluskey (39), Kathryn Eakin (9), David Miller (60), James McClelland (65), Willie Temple (16), Rose McLaughlin (52), Patrick Joseph Connolly (15) and Arthur Hone (38).

Derry Journal
02 January 2009

The Republican goal of achieving a united Ireland is unattainable, Gregory Campbell has said.

In a statement released to coincide with the New Year, the North’s Culture Minister said republicanism had now adopted a new approach in the hope of gaining support among unionists for constitutional change.

“Many in the republican movement have been persuaded to support their tactical change on the basis that they believed their ultimate goal remains attainable.

Shift

“The leadership of Sinn Fein have quite blatantly, and with no visible signs of embarrassment, shifted the emphasis from killing unionists into trying to demonstrate that they now wish to kill us with kindness in another doomed effort to get our support for constitutional change,” he said.

Mr Campbell said those aiming for the goal of a united Ireland should accept defeat.

“Sooner or later their movement has to face defeat, whether it will be those being deceived or those at the top doing the deceiving, at some point two very fundamental issues will compound matters for all sides in Sinn Fein.

“A settled Northern Ireland with a divergence of communities is always going to be much more at home in the UK than outside of it.

“Secondly, as the historical myth of nationalist disadvantage is replaced by the present day reality of unionist disadvantage, the change that must happen within that settled Northern Ireland is one that republicans are going to have to face up to,” he said.

The East Derry MLA said the process that has seen republicanism move towards democracy remained a gradual one.

He said he beleived “factors which may delay the required transformation of political republicanism”, still lay ahead and said unionism would remain ” vigilant in how we deal with republicans, whether on the policing and justice issue or on wider matters.”

The Stormont Minster said as the New Year dawned people across the North would be expecting to see delivery on devolution.

“Ongoing worldwide financial pressures have made improvements more difficult to achieve, according to most economists things will probably worsen before they begin to ease. The test for all Government Departments in Northern Ireland is to be ready to take advantage when the international climate does begin to improve,” he added.