The Soviet cartoons, many of them unpublished, are taken from a unique private collection, and are juxtaposed with Western cartoons drawn from various sources. They reveal the extraordinary obsessions and propaganda campaigns that influenced the work of the Soviet cartoonists in particular, but also the remarkable similarities that can be seen in each side's depiction of the other. Superbly designed in the form of a book within a book, Drawing the Curtain is part cultural history, part art monograph. Contributions by Tim Benson, a leading authority on the history of cartoons, and Polly Jones, a cultural historian specializing in representations of Stalin, provide the context to the period, while extended image captions elucidate the individual works. This is a book that offers a very different take on the history of international relations in the second half of the twentieth century: through national humour and propaganga.
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