Explore the In art and culture of this artwork.
When you look closely, you can see that many iconic photographs are constructed in the same way; it is possible to copy the formula. Look at some of the most enduring images of our age … Like Che, they are shot from below against a light background, giving them a raised, Godlike quality. The angle of the shot is particularly crucial, as profiles have little impact and full frontals tend to flatten the features. The direction and intensity of the subject's gaze is also key. Che is looking past the camera, out to his vision. His line of vision has been much tinkered with by various artists, but it retains its passion even on a table mat or a screensaver. An image like this is about a sign: it's a shorthand. This particular one now stands for opposition to the establishment, freedom and revolution.
As pop artists took to the image with glee, it evolved into a popular and heavily commercialized icon that often strayed far from Che's hard-line Marxist message. British pop artist Sir Peter Blake has referred to Guerrillero Heroico as "one of the great icons of the 20th century". When converted into a stark black cut-out, Korda's photograph became easy, cheap, and fast to copy using the favored material and method of the 1960s: lith film and screen painting. By the time of his death in 1967, Che was already "a legend, the romantic epitome of worldwide rebellion" and in the wake of his perceived martyrdom, Korda's photograph went viral. Rebellious young people found in it a "sense of empowerment, a crystallization of the perennial idealism of youth".
According to the V&A Museum, "the photograph enshrines Che as a mythic hero. Taken from below, the revolutionary leader with searching eyes and resolute expression becomes larger than life. A perspective that dominates the imagery of social realism, it bears an irresistible aura of authority, independence and defiance." The V&A Museum goes on to state that Korda's famous photograph first deified Che and turned him into an icon of radical chic. Its story, a complex mesh of conflicting narratives, gave Guerrillero Heroico a life of its own, an enduring fascination independent of Che himself. The Italian magazine Skime evokes even more praise, decreeing it "absolutely the most famous of history" while proclaiming that it "captures beauty and youth, courage and generosity, aesthetic and moral virtues of a person who possessed all the characteristics necessary to be converted into a symbol of an epoch like ours, lacking in historic legends and mythic incarnations." Journalist Richard Gott has also remarked that "the red star in Che's beret was up there with 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'." Jonathan Green, director of the UCR photography museum, has remarked that "pop art is a rejection of traditional figuration, rhetoric, and rendition. Its egalitarian anti-art stance was the perfect corollary for Che's anti-establishment attitude."
Marxist Sir Peter Blake UCR deified radical chic martyrdom epoch pop artist photograph V&A Museum red star revolutionary beret Jonathan Green Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Richard Gott