The Space Race / Yes to Spooks and Orgies
[MARKOVIC AFFAIR.]
Oui aux barbouzes … Fifty-fifty? [Paris], Imprimerie Speciale Sorbonne, [c. 1969].
Two-sided poster (c. 590 x 445 mm); silkscreen in red and blue ink on white paper and silkscreen in red poster paint; a few smudges from printing, else in excellent condition.
Two rare posters printed back-to-back on the same sheet, an excellent illustration of the widespread political upheaval of the late years of the 1960s.
Printed by Sorbonne students, one side relates to affairs at home, bearing in tricolore colours the sardonic message Oui aux barbouzes, oui aux partouzes, oui à pompidouzes, or yes to ‘spooks’, orgies, and friends of the then-President Georges Pompidou. The word markovice at bottom right identifies the subject of the poster as the Markovic affair of 1969: serial blackmailer Stevan Markovic allegedly possessed photos of Madame Pompidou engaging in an orgy, and was apparently bumped off as a result. A wonderfully sarcastic response to a very Parisian sex scandal.
The brilliant, blood-red image on the other side of the poster shows a more global, even interplanetary concern, depicting the Soviet bear and American eagle staking their claims to the moon, the bear possibly delivering socialist puns: ‘Fifty-fifty?’ ‘Moi la gauche et toi la droit!’ The eagle is crushing the olive branch of peace with one talon.
We cannot trace any copies of ‘Fifty-Fifty’. OCLC finds one copy of the ‘Oui aux barbouzes’ at Yale.