Trump 24K Gold-Plated
Poster
2016 (made)
2016 (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
Poster on black paper entitled 'Trump 24K Gold-Plated' depicting a motif utilising four rotated, interlocking letter Ts embossed in gold to form a swastika in the black negative space between the letters.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Trump 24K Gold-Plated (assigned by artist) |
| Materials and techniques | Embossed poster |
| Brief description | Embossed poster by 'Design is Play' entitled 'Trump 24K Gold-Plated'. San Francisco, USA, 2016. |
| Physical description | Poster on black paper entitled 'Trump 24K Gold-Plated' depicting a motif utilising four rotated, interlocking letter Ts embossed in gold to form a swastika in the black negative space between the letters. |
| Dimensions |
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| Credit line | Given by Angie Wang & Mark Fox / Design is Play |
| Association | |
| Bibliographic reference | The work was selected as the Poster of the Week by the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Culver City, California, in the week running up to the United States Presidential Election of 2016. The designers explained, "Let's be clear: for some Americans, the attractive aspects of Donald Trump’s public persona can obscure his repellent views. The tension in our design between positive and negative space—between luxe gold foil letters and the matte black swastika—is meant to mirror this dualism, and it is a tension that makes some uncomfortable.”
The designers were inspired by Jesse Reed and Michael Bierut's design of an official H monogram for Hillary Clinton's campaign, so decided to create an unauthorized poster for Trump. In their own words as quoted from a press release issued with the poster:
"Whereas Hillary's H pulls one's eye to the letterform itself, the narrative implicit in our design requires the viewer's gaze to oscillate between foreground and background; between typographic form and counter-form. The form comprises four gold rotating letter Ts which are emblematic of qualities projected by Donald Trump and largely accepted by his supporters: strength, success, wealth, and revolutionary (ie. impolitic) speech. The counter-form suggests a conflicting narrative, however: namely that Trump's disruptive and divisive rhetoric is creating metaphoric negative spaces in the fabric of American society. These spaces- fracture lines really - snake through the design's square silhouette to reveal a swastika. And while the swastika is historically a symbol of dynamism and cyclical renewal associated with the sun, in this context it simply evokes hate speech and nationalist demagoguery". |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | E.57-2017 |
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| Record created | January 5, 2017 |
| Record URL |
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