nothin Prints of Peace Arrive As Cartoons | New Haven Independent

Prints of Peace Arrive As Cartoons

Omer Cam

Turkey, Golden Plaque winner.

This is the season when we all try to remember to beat swords into ploughshares. How about tank treads into wine casks? Kalashnikov barrels into flutes?

Alexsander Blatnick

Serbia, Bronze Plaque

Those modern riffs on the Hebrew prophet Isaiah’s cri de coeur for peace appear in two of 90 images in the 31st annual International Anti-War Cartoon Exhibit, now on view at the New Alliance Foundation Art Gallery at Gateway Community College. Organized by the International Association of Peace Messenger Cities (IAPMC) and presented by the New Haven Peace Commission, the show runs until Jan. 17.

The show’s images, digitally projected on three white walls of the gallery, pack a real wallop. Each stays up for about 15 seconds, and they are by turns disturbing, horrific, puzzling, and funny.

The 90 winners from approximately 500 submissions were selected by the Antiwar Cartoon Salon in Kragujevac, Serbia. Very few of the entrants this year are Americans, said Seth Godfrey, one of the organizers of the opening reception and the current chair of the New Haven Peace Commission.

You may not know it but the U.S. has engaged in 14 wars in the Middle East since 1980. This is an outcry of artists: Stop it!’” said longtime local peace activist Al Marder (pictured), who is also an honorary president of the IAPMC.

Among his own favorites in the show for the most compelling image — and the contest’s grand prix winner — is this one by Iranian cartoonist Massoud Shojai Tabatabai: a beleaguered soldier opens a door labeled WAR”… 

”…and there’s darkness,” said Marder — no heroism, no positive values whatsoever. People talk about the consequences of war. It’s here [in this cartoon]: the madness, the horror, without saying a word.”

For the last three decades, the exhibit has been shown in the United States at the United Nations, but the U.N. facilities have been undergoing renovation and New Haven has come to the rescue hosting the show here for the second straight year.

Last year the actual art came through and was put on GCC’s walls. This year, due to customs problems, the Serbian organizers could only send digital files, which GCC gallery coordinator Peter Benson and the tech folks converted into a CD, which projects the images. Benson and GCC’s art program coordinator Nicholas Halko both agreed nothing has been lost in having the digital images.

Most of the original art is relatively small, about the size of a sheet of paper. Projected large on the walls, the calls for peace are funny, shocking, thought provoking. They are in your face.”

The show addresses every type of atrocity going on in the world, Benson said. If there’s a single pattern or theme that comes through, he said, it might be how absurd war is. The message really comes home.”

Halco said the college is making a big effort to have its classes — not only the 25 sections of art classes, but political science and history classes as well — drop by the gallery. The professors have been notified,” he said.

Greater New Haven Peace Council Chairman Henry Lowendorf is contacting the salon organizers in Serbia to ask permission to show the cartoons in other venues in the area. Given the file format we have” for the show, he said, we shouldn’t limit it to New Haven.”

This is not an ordinary exhibition,” said Marder. It’s a crying out by creative artists that enough is enough.”

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