> contents / Imaginary Worlds in Collision / John Held Jr. /

What happens when Imaginary Worlds collide with bureaucratic and political realities? The clash often underscores societal tensions, placing both government and artist in a discomforting situation. Such was the case in the creation of artist postage stamps produced decades apart, each case highlighting the tensions of the particular political period in which the works were produced, and the continuing concern of the artist to assert his independence and identity.

William Farley created a postage stamp sheet in 1971 protesting the ongoing war in Viet Nam and the Kent State killings. In 2004, Al Brandtner created his Patriot Act postage stamps, chastising the government’s reach into the lives of its citizens. In both instances, the subversive power of the artist postage stamp in artistic hands came under governmental scrutiny.

Farley stated that, “The idea of having the back of my head printed on an American stamp was to combine my own feeling that I am an American of great worth and the contradiction that the people of vision aren’t represented in the power structure that exists today.” When a friend of the artist used one of his stamps to mail a letter to his blind mother, postal authorities alerted the Secret Service, beginning a six-month investigation ending in an interview with the artist and his friend.

Among a host of stamp sheets of questionable taste in the 2005 Chicago Axis of Evil exhibition, Brandtner’s work inspired a citizen complaint that triggered an investigation by the Secret Service (whose chief responsibility is the protection of the President of the United States). The image of a gun pointed at Bush’s head, with the words “Patriot Act” underneath, was enough of a provocation for the Secret Service to ask for the names and addresses of everyone involved in the exhibition. Despite the gallery refusing their request, and exhibition curator Michael Hernandez De Luna alerting the media, no further action appears to have been taken.

“It frightens me…as an artist and curator,” Hernandez de Luna was reported as saying in the Chicago Sun Times (April 12, 2005). “Now we’re being watched. It’s a new world. It’s a Big Brother world. I think it’s frightening for any artist who wants to do edgy art.” This is especially true for Hernandez de Luna, the curator of the Axis of Evil exhibition, whose 2001 artistamp depicting fruit flavored anthrax, was confiscated when it arrived at Chicago’s main post office, and placed the artist under investigation.

Responding to Secret Service agents visiting an art exhibition of artist postage stamps, the art critic of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “Now is a time in national politics when independent thinkers are portrayed as heretics and accused of going ‘against people of faith.’ Such a time requires more protest rather than less. The artists on view are doing it… they are concerned about us all, even if some of us are too comfortable to want to see it.”

Some see the creation of artistamps portraying Imaginary Worlds as harmless diversions from reality. For other artists, who link these works with political and societal issues, the consequences can be considerable. All utopias comment on the present condition of society and the possibilities of the future. Who would have guessed that utopian artistamps could rouse the interest of the government? Their small-scale subversion may have wider influence then expected.

Copyright © by John Held Jr.