Category:
Politics
Aug 1971: Posters appeared around Stockholm showing U.S. President Richard Nixon drinking a cup of coffee. They appeared to be ads for Gevalia coffee — though it seemed odd that Nixon would do an ad for Gevalia.
image source: moderna museet
According to Google Translate, "Gevalia dricks mest" means "Gevalia is drunk the most"
It turned out that the posters were the work of artist Kjartan Slettemark. He had combined an image of a hand holding a coffee cup, taken from an actual Gevalia ad, with a photo of Nixon distributed by the U.S. embassy. The posters were apparently a satirical commentary on the recent acquisition of Gevalia by an American company.
Indianapolis Star - Aug 6, 1971
The auction house Bukowskis
offers some more details about Slettemark's hoax:
In 1971, Kjartan Slettemark came across a campaign poster featuring Nixon's portrait, innocently sent out by the American embassy. It hung on the studio wall for a few weeks when one day he asked for an advertisement poster for Gevalia coffee that he had seen at his local shop. The advertisement image showed a smiling woman lifting a coffee cup. When he cut out the woman's hand and placed it on the Nixon image, the size, colour, and lighting matched perfectly. He immediately wanted to print the work as a poster but could not afford the printing himself. He added the text "Moderna Museet - Open every day 12 - 22" and submitted it for printing at the press used by Moderna Museet. The poster was printed, and the bill was sent to Moderna Museet. The next morning, Stockholm's advertising pillars were filled with Nixon posters. Moderna Museet reacted and wrote a letter to the artist prohibiting him from selling or distributing the image. Despite this, the image continued to appear around the city. Kjartan Slettemark continued to work with the image, cutting away the museum's text and making it even more similar to Gevalia's campaign image. The fake Gevalia poster was political art. A protest against the US war in Vietnam and against American imperialism. In 1971, the Gävle company Gevalia had been acquired by the multinational corporation General Foods – thus finding itself on the enemy's side. The story continues as the advertising text is cut away and gradually develops into the collage series "Nixon Visions," where the president's face is distorted in various ways.
Three years later, Slettemark returned to Nixon as a subject. Slettemark applied for a new passport, but instead of submitting a picture of himself he used an altered picture of Nixon. The passport authorities accepted it. Images and text below from
Cabinet magazine (Spring 2009):
The front yard of a Phoenix home displays campaigns signs of major candidates who have lost a presidential election, including failed candidates of yesteryear such as James G. Blaine and Winfield Hancock.
The signs are the work of artist Nina Katchadourian who calls it the "Monument to the Unelected." She's been creating it (and finding homes to host it) every presidential election cycle since 2008.
On her website she explains:
Each sign was made in a design vernacular that could have come from any time in the past few decades, even if it advertised a candidate from a previous century. At a time when the country was preoccupied with the "fork in the road" moment of a major national election, the piece presented a view of the country's collective political road not taken.
More info:
smoca.org,
AZFamily.com
Just in case you have not gotten your fill of politics this year, why not search out a copy of the Mr. President Game and play a few rounds?
Visit Board Game Geek for details.
A low-ambition campaign promise: Adeline Geo-Karis promised that, if elected Comptroller of Illinois, she would lose 50 pounds. She didn't win.
Bloomington Pantagraph - May 23, 1986
Gilbert Young first came to the attention of the British press in the 1960s as a crusader for a single world government. He ran repeatedly for various political offices but never won an election.
Below is an ad he placed in the papers seeking new members for his "World Government Party."
Bristol Daily Press - Jan 29, 1964
But his real claim to fame came in the mid 1970s when the editors of the Guinness Book of Records learned that, for years, Young had been trying to get his book published but had only received rejections from publishers. His book,
World Government Crusade, had, by 1974, been rejected 80 times. So Guinness listed him in its 1975 edition as the record holder for the "greatest recorded number of publisher's rejections for a manuscript."
Bristol Daily Press - Sep 26, 1974
Guinness Book of Records 1975
For over fifteen years Guinness continued to list him as the holder of this record. Every few years it would update the number of his rejections. By 1990 his book had been rejected 242 times.
Guinness Book of Records 1991
I thought that perhaps Young's book would now be available to read or purchase somewhere on the Internet. But no, as far as I can tell it's still unavailable.
AboutComics.com recently released an expanded edition of
Cold-War Coloring: Political Adult Coloring Books of the Kennedy Era, and WU played a small part in its creation.
The book collects together politically-themed, satirical coloring books of the 1960s. Such as the
JFK Coloring Book and
Khrushchev’s Top Secret Coloring Book.
For the expanded edition the editor, Nat Gertler, wanted to include the
Sing along with Khrushchov coloring book, published in 1962. However, he couldn't find a copy of it. There were no copies in libraries and none for sale.
Then he discovered that we here at WU
happened to have posted a scanned copy of it online back in 2020. I tried to connect him with the reader who had sent us the scanned copy, so that he could get a higher-quality version of the pdf, but no luck there. But thankfully Nat was able to make do with the copy we had. So now this obscure title is once again in print.
Glad we were able to help prevent it from being lost forever.