Seductive imagery, fiery propaganda define WWI poster exhibit

A war without the marquee value of Vietnam or WWII, WWI gets its due in a fascinating exhibition of propaganda posters on view at the Atlanta History Center. WWI signaled the dawn of poster art used at the service of propaganda, and the posters in “Uncle Sam Wants You! World War I and the American Poster,” many sourced from local collector Walton Rawls, offered a range of appeals to isolationist Americans.

There are campaigns for enlistment; to buy war bonds and war savings stamps; appeals to black Americans to serve; exhortations to purge sugar, flour, fat and meat from diets, so those rations could go to American soldiers fighting abroad. “Uncle Sam Wants You!” offers insight into another age, when all forces of society galvanized behind a national war effort.

One of the unavoidable reflexes in such historical exhibitions is to compare the attitudes and expectations of the past with today’s: It’s hard to imagine similar appeals to self-sacrifice and deprivation succeeding today. Beyond the fascinating details of the designs themselves — often stark and simple in their use of color and imagery — “Uncle Sam Wants You!” offers surprising insight into how a country’s patriotism, including calls to recent immigrants to express their newfound national allegiance, was rallied in posters for war bonds that demanded, “Are you 100% American? Prove it.”

Urging Americans to fight a faraway war and wrest themselves out of isolationism was the mission of the American government’s Division of Pictorial Publicity, whose illustrators also defined the look and feel of the age. The same illustrators — J.C. Leyendecker, Howard Chandler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg — who crafted these posters steeped in American iconography also contributed Betty Crocker, the Gibson Girl, the Arrow Collar Man, Santa and the New Year baby to our national lexicon.

WWI gave us some of our most indelible images of America, including Flagg’s totemic “I Want You” recruiting poster featuring Uncle Sam, created in 1916 and ingrained in the American consciousness ever since. Less often remembered is the lithe, white tunic-draped Lady Liberty, a feminine symbol of American values. One of the revelations of “Uncle Sam Wants You!” is how synonymous femininity was with patriotism in image after image of female sacrifice and masculine suffering. “Joan of Arc Saved France,” one poster intones, so the job of America’s women was to offer a sacrifice of their own, whether by buying savings bonds or working for the Red Cross.

Some of the most blatant and plainly propagandistic depictions of the stakes of the war are outlined in broad, frightening brushstrokes where “Huns” with blood-soaked boots and fingers dripping crimson, with hulking, gorilla-like bodies and eerie blue eyes shining like lasers from beneath metal helmets are contrasted with the slim, youthful, rosycheeked representations of America: cherubic children with corn silk curls, delicate young women and soldiers with the wholesome looks of matinee idols.

In one of the exhibition’s more incendiary images, “Remember Belgium,” a German soldier with spiked helmet and enormous mustache is shown in silhouette before a raging fire dragging a young girl away, shorthand for the German mistreatment of Belgian civilians during the war. In a poster designed by Joseph Pennell, apocalyptic imagery worthy of a contemporary action film features German planes flying above the skies of New York City, a decapitated Statue of Liberty testifying to the threat of an unprepared America.

Such images painted a marked contrast between us and them and imagined a world on the edge of collapse, where only the actions of ordinary Americans could ensure survival.

CONTRIBUTED BY ATLANTA HISTORY CENTER This 1917 poster, artist unknown, is featured at the Atlanta History Center.

CONTRIBUTED BY ATLANTA HISTORY CENTER Noted illustrator James Montgomery Flagg was one of the talented artists who created propaganda posters to bolster the WWI war campaign.