CHE AS ICON

In a 1968 poster commemorating the first anniversary of the Oct. 8 capture in Bolivia of Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Elena Serrano transformed a high-contrast photograph of the bearded, beret-wearing freedom fighter into a flat, red-and-white portrait, which she superimposed over a map of South America. The rectangle surrounding his dramatic face is repeated in ever larger rhythms, like the ripples from a pebble dropped into a pond, until the image of Che and the landscape of a continent seem hypnotically fused into one.

Fifteen years later, graphic artist N~iko used exactly the same portrait of Che, repeating it seven times in various sizes, dispersing the heads across a white page like falling rain and outlining the flat colors in black, in a psychedelic cartoon manner reminiscent of the Beatles movie “Yellow Submarine.” N~iko’s poster advertised a 1983 documentary film, but its immediately recognizable period style loudly declared 1968--the year Che’s posthumous “Bolivian Diaries” were published and his myth took flight.

These two posters are among 169 graphic works, numerous photographs and assorted memorabilia of Che now gathered in a wonderful exhibition at UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Organized by guest curator David Kunzle, a UCLA art historian, and accompanied by an informative catalog, “Che Guevara: Icon, Myth and Message” is savvy and satisfying.

What becomes a legend most? In Havana today, the answer might be the frenzied excitement that has greeted the return of the revolutionary leader’s remains to Cuba, on the 30th anniversary of his slaying. But if this fascinating show is any indication, the answer is: a proliferation of images, fluid and malleable enough for inestimable uses.

Take the posters by Serrano and N~iko. Both employ the same intimate portrait of Che, by all accounts a remarkably handsome man, depicted from slightly below eye level. He’s simultaneously endowed with the humility of an everyman and the larger-than-life presence of a hero.

But, look again. In one poster, Che looks up to the left, the right side of his face hidden in shadow. In the other, he’s looking up to the right, his left side shaded. They’re the same photograph, but flopped.

For graphic purposes, the true features of the actual man are incidental. And, in any case, their component parts--piercing eyes, flowing hair, beret with star, wispy beard and mustache--are so immediately recognizable that the icon says “Che” regardless.

This contributes to his usefulness as a multipurpose image. In the show, he’s fractured as if through a prism: Che crucified on a dollar sign, Che as glamour boy, Che cast as a replacement for Uncle Sam, Che as the soul of South America. Vulgarian, saint, intellectual, celebrity--the breadth, pervasiveness and longevity of the icon are remarkable.

The Fowler exhibition, whose posters mostly come from the local Center for the Study of Political Graphics, is helpfully divided into five parts. Don’t be daunted by the considerable text that greets you in the introductory space. Clearly presented, it’s a necessary foundation for the visual richness that follows.

Freddy Alborta’s famous, feet-first photograph of the dead Che laid out for public display by his executioners creates a startling riff on the great Renaissance painting of the dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna. The photo is the linchpin for section one, which chronicles the creation in the popular imagination of “Chesucristo,” or a kind of Prince of Peace-Through-Revolution.

Next comes “Projections of Che,” in which his identity as a revolutionary hero fuses with landscape imagery. Often the landscape is South America, as in a big, gorgeous collage of symbols called “America Awakens” (1972), by Alberto Perez and Patricia Israel.

Che was born in Argentina (his nickname is in fact a vernacular term for an Argentine)of upper-middle-class parents, and his death in Bolivia at age 39 came in a failed guerrilla effort to incite all of Latin America.

In developing a political philosophy Che came to see the region as one cultural and economic entity, rather than a group of individual nations. That belief is given seductive and, more importantly, persuasive visual form in the luxurious jumble of pictures that create the borderless continental landscape of “America Awakens.”

The section “From Photo to Graphic” focuses on the most famous picture of Che--the one used by Serrano, N~iko and dozens of other graphic artists--and how it proliferated to become his signature image. Taken in 1960 by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, the photograph crystallizes a conflicted, oddly appropriate emotional state, at once pained and unruly.

Equally important, it also froze his features at the peak of their physical beauty. Che was then 32. In the proliferation of his image since his death (he’d be 69 today), he’s remained an ever-youthful demigod.

Chesucristo, superstar.

This third section features memorabilia adorned with Korda’s Che: jewelry, mugs, T-shirts, plates, key rings, even beer. It also includes an engaging interactive digital database, directed by Fabian Wagmister, that conveys the endlessly shifting sense of the martyr’s malleable image.

“Beyond Cuba,” the fourth section, shows how Che, as an idealized emblem of struggle for liberation, came to be used around the world for any number of causes. Various posters invoke his legacy against the war in Vietnam and capitalism in general, and in favor of Chicano rights and Catholic women’s liberation.

In “Che Gay,” he’s even given blue eye-shadow and crimson lips. This Warhol-style makeover, which dates from Britain in the early 1970s, appropriates a symbol of radical machismo for the post-Stonewall purposes of the gay liberation movement.

Finally, the show closes with “Third World Solidarity,” a chronicle of about 30 examples of posters meant to foster Che’s ideals, whether or not his famous face is employed. In Havana, the Organization for Solidarity With the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, or OSPAAAL, produced about 350 different posters that were distributed to 87 countries around the world.

“Che Guevara: Icon, Myth and Message” works because it never takes its eyes off a remarkably potent image, whose multifarious meanings it seeks to coax out. A textbook example of how to survey complex intersections between visual art and political ideology in compelling and productive ways, it’s an exhibition not to miss.

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* Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA, (310) 825-4361, through Feb. 1. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.