France Imitates Art, Stalin
Boing Boing comments on a French stamp with an airbrushed picture of Sarte, sans cigarette. However, the French are way behind on this. Uncle Sam led the way in airbrushing cigarettes, but not people, out of pictures, as these two images of blues pioneer Robert Johnson show. The Honolulu Star got a great quote from a Post Office spokesdroid.
From one of those links on Satre wrote:
> “Smoking,” the Left-wing existentialist wrote, is “the symbolic equivalent of destructively appropriating the entire world.”
It sounds like both sweet justice and art to me. Picasso said that good artists borrow and great artists steal. The presentation of an image can be modified to present a point; the point of art is not to adorn walls with pretty colours but (arguably) to present a different point of view.
In stamps, the French PO suggests that Satre lost in the war to destructively appropriate the world.
It’s not the same photo. Look closely.