Fighting Fascism

The real subject of the current show at the Platt Gallery at the University of Judaism is not so much the imagery but the idealism it conveys.

Between World War I and World War II, nearly 3,000 Americans volunteered to fight against Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, forming the fabled Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

Because many of the volunteer troops were Jewish, the brigade could be viewed as “the first expression of Jewish resistance to fascism,” noted curator Cary Nelson.

The conflict was one of the first to be well-served by photojournalism, thanks to technological advances and growing respect for it as a vehicle for expression.

The 1930s saw social documentary photography aspiring to artistic heights, especially in the WPA work of artists such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Marion Post-Wolcott.

Many of the images in “The Aura of the Cause: A Photo Album for North American Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War” are more like bland snapshots than the result of journalism bumping into art, but the standout images speak for themselves.

The centerpiece is the famed image by Robert Capa titled “Falling Militiaman Federico Borrell Garcia,” clearly one of the greatest and best-known war photographs. A soldier has just been shot and is seen, in fuzzy focus, falling backward. As he plummets from life to death, he is immortalized by the photographer--who was in the right place at the right time.

In this exhibition, Capa provides other memorable images, in which the heat of the historical moment and the art of the well-composed shot are nicely married.

In one 1936 shot, a trainful of young troops appears invincible and eager to hit the front lines, oblivious to the uglier truths ahead.

Another strikingly conceived shot finds shirtless young recruits exercising in formation, clutching rifles as if they are nothing more than aerobic accessories.

Hanging in the hallway of the University of Judaism’s lobby are other cultural references triggered by the Spanish Civil War, which captured the poetic fancy of artists in ways that grander and grislier conflicts did not.

We find a print of Picasso’s antiwar epic, “Guernica,” stylish propaganda posters and a quote from Ernest Hemingway’s “On the American Dead in Spain,” circa 1939.

In it, he intones the immortality of the American effort abroad: “. . . our dead are a part of the earth of Spain now and the earth of Spain can never die.”

Greater global horror was just around the corner in the late ‘30s, as Hitler’s machine revved up its far more massive engines of tyranny.

The Spanish Civil War retreated into the annals of history as a footnote of fascist aggression. But for Americans who heeded the call and urgency of their own idealism, the war survives as a symbol of taking action.

It was a case of fighting the good fight, in an age before the stakes became exceedingly high.

BE THERE

“The Aura of the Cause: A Photo Album for North American Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War,” Platt Gallery, University of Judaism, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles. Through March. Gallery hours: Sunday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. (310) 476-9777, Ext. 203.