Poster Art, Visual Culture, and Esperanto

There’s a blog about Esperanto (but not *in* Esperanto) that I occasionally read, and a recent article brought up the question as to whether Esperanto has a visual culture.

Leks, the author of the post, noted that part of language classes in schools and colleges is learning more about the culture in which the language is situated, and often includes looking at the visual arts of that culture.  For example, a course in Spanish is likely to include at least some reference to famous Spanish artists and well known Spanish paintings.

He wondered whether anything similar existed within the Esperanto culture, and he couldn’t think of any examples (at least, none that were readily accessible).

But I could.

As I was reading his article, I realised that my impression of Esperanto as a culture is actually strongly associated with art.  When I think about Esperanto as a cultural movement or a cultural group, there are a number of artworks in particular that spring to mind – and almost always have.  I hadn’t noticed it before I read this article, but the art of the Esperanto movement is a big part of it for me.

Now, the author of the article is someone who is heavily involved in the Esperanto culture, while I dabble around the edges.  So why would it be that he struggled to think of a “visual culture” within the Esperanto culture, while I’ve “almost always” associated Esperanto with art?

I think it’s because we’re looking for art in different places.  He’s thinking about finding it in a gallery, while I found it in the ephemera collection of a library.

I’ve known about the language of Esperanto (or at least the idea of it) since I was a child, but it was always an abstract concept – one to which I didn’t pay much heed.  I only really realised that there was an entire culture (or subculture) wrapped around the language when I visited the Esperanto Museum in Vienna.

The Esperanto Museum isn’t actually a museum at all – it’s a permanent display by the Austrian National Library.  It takes up two smallish rooms in one of the library’s buildings.  And what they display is…

Posters and other ephemera.

The library has produced some interpretive signs to tell the story of Esperanto (and these signs formed the beginning of my education on the subject), but what captured my attention was the posters, pamphlets, flyers and printed what-nots that were on display on the walls and in the cabinets.

A lot of people forget that posters are an artistic medium.  When you look at a poster advertising an event or product, you’re not just reading it for information – you are looking at a work of art.  Late 19^th and early 20^th Century poster art in particular is fantastic, and you’ve probably seen a lot of old posters (once advertisements) that have been reproduced as decorative items in cafés and living rooms.

Posters, pamphlets, conference programmes… these are all examples of a certain kind of art at a certain point in time.  And they are all things that were designed for a particular purpose or event, and were often destroyed after they had served their purpose.  That’s why we call them “ephemera” – they were never meant to stick around. 

But many libraries have ephemera collections, and in this way they have saved these items that are – at one and the same time – evidence of the historical events of a culture and slices of visual culture.

Thanks to the Austrian National Library, I have a strong association in my mind between the Esperanto culture and poster art – particularly early 20^th Century poster art. 

Not only is the art itself glorious (in a way that only poster art can be), but it’s also rife with symbolism.  It’s fascinating to see how the artists (almost all anonymous) have captured some aspect of the culture’s ethos or highlighted a particular characteristic of Esperanto and Esperantists – all in approximately four colours.

Does Esperanto have a visual culture?  Yes.  Resolutely yes.  And if the flyer I recently saw for a congress in Indonesia is anything to go by, it’s still flourishing.

Artist: Joanne Johns