Spassky vs Fischer

by Marion Marseglia, Sélène Bragard, Charlotte Salmon, Hanna Hammerlund 1ES1

The postcard shown here was designed by Halldor Petursson (1911-1976), a famous Icelandic caricature cartoonist who drew 18 cartoons of the most famous chess match in history for a local newspaper called The Reykjavik Grapevine. It is a representation of the chess match between US grandmaster Bobby FISCHER and USSR grandmaster Boris SPASSKY that took place in 1972, during the World Chess Championship. It is taken from Picasaweb.com; it’s a website where you can find photos. 

We can notice that the cartoon is divided into two different parts:

On the left hand side of the cartoon, there is a man standing on a piece of chess, riding a horse. He represents the knight of a chess game. He’s wearing  red and white striped pants and a blue shirt with stars, with cow-boy boots and a pistol in a belt. We can deduce that his outfit represents the American flag and he  looks like a cow-boy. The man wearing this outfit is Bobby Fisher; he is a young American chess player. He’s also holding a very big bag on his shoulder ; both  the “dollar” and the “pound sterling ” are printed on it. Those symbols show us the powerof money  in  capitalism.

If the Americans are on the left, we can deduce that the people standing on the right stand for the USSR . Boris Spassky, the world chess champion of that time is also  a piece from the chess game, called the rook. It is represented in red, the colour of communism, and there is the Russian symbol (red star and hammer) on it. Boris Spassky wears a suit and has a big head, compared to Bobby Fischer. He’s holding an impressive crown in his left hand and with the other hand, he’s holding Fischer’s arm. Somehow, Fisher is trying to grab the crown of the World Chess Champion. Spassky has a big smile on his face; he is self-confident while Fischer looks disappointed. Spassky owns the crown and no one can ever have it. Furthermore, the rook is represented in such a way that we think it’s impressive. It also seems   difficult to be  taken. The chess match appears to be a hard game and Spassky will do all his best to keep the title.

From a wider perspective, the Fischer-Spassky match had a unique political importance. In fact this caricature shows the face to face between capitalism and communism, between the power of  money and ideology, another conception of life (which is different in  communism).

“Gens una sumus” means “we are one people”, is the World Chess Federation motto. It means one big family which  confronts two members during a chess match, but which will be reconciled in the end.

We’ve chosen this photo because it’s a good description of what we are studying in class. It represents the confrontation between the US and the USSR, capitalism and communism. It also shows us the two different conceptions of life from the capitalistic point of view and the communist one.