The Return of the Movie Poster Art
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The Return of the Movie Poster Art: A Comparison of Hollywood Poster Design and its Contemporary Opposing Force Twan Zijlstra VU University Amsterdam Jan den Haenstraat 36-III Faculty of Arts 1055 WG Amsterdam Comparative Arts and Media Studies Tel.: 06-41636920 Elective: Design History Student number: 2536114 Alice Twemlow E-mail address: [email protected]; [email protected] December 17, 2015 Introduction We live in an age of artistic and creative fluidity. In an almost Marxist way, by facilitating people’s urge to create and share their work, technological advances have slowly but steadily been breaking down the hierarchy that used to dominate creative practice as well as its valuation. With professional tools for visual content creation such as cameras and advanced computer software available and affordable, it is easier than ever to engage in artistic and professional design practice. Moreover, specialized social sharing platforms such as FLICKR and DEVIANTART allow for semi-professionals, or even just enthusiasts, to gain recognition and even stardom within the ever-growing underground scene of digital artists, designers and photographers. As a result, the moment the professional elite stops being innovative and passionate about their work, there are many non-professional designers waiting out there ready to fill the gap. According to Matthew Chojnacki, freelance writer on film and music history, this is what underground artists and designers have been doing with the movie poster.1 The movie poster today is not the respected and widely exposed artistic medium it was when Saul Bass, celebrated movie poster and title sequence designer, designed his iconic poster (Img. 1) for VERTIGO in the late 50s. With the internet and television taking the dominant role in film promotion today, the exposition of the movie poster has been reduced to cinema walls and windows, more informative than compelling. In his time, Saul Bass was accompanied by other important designers such as Bob Peak and Drew Struzan, but their contemporary counterparts gather little attention. However, this development has not been left unanswered, as shown by the proliferation of alternative movie posters in recent years. These posters are most often digitally created and distributed through the artists’ personal websites and sharing platforms such as DEVIANTART, shaping an alternative movie poster Image 1 Poster VERTIGO (1958). scene gaining increasing recognition. 1 Chojnacki 2013, back cover. 2 © Twan Zijlstra, 2015 In Alternative Movie Posters: Film Art from the Underground (2013), Chojnacki presents reimagined, unofficial movie posters by over 100 artists from across the globe. In his introduction, Chojnacki describes this collection as the answer to the sudden collapse of the movie poster as an artistic medium, in the mid-90s.2 He puts it as follows: Instead of using paint brushes to create inventive works of art, they were instead using them to remove blemishes and wrinkles from celebrity headshots. The poster was reduced to simply communicating who was in the film, instead of conveying the bigger picture –the spirit of the film. (Chojnacki 2013, p. 4.) What started as the sharing of fan art, matured into a contemporary movement that is slowly starting to gain recognition in the worlds of art and design.3 Such a development demands to be put in historical perspective and this essay aims to take the first step in that direction, using Chojnacki’s collection as a starting point. In order to critically analyze and contextualize his evaluation of the underground movie poster, the central research question of this essay will be as follows: how does the design of contemporary, alternative movie posters depicting Hollywood Classics, relate to their official, historical counterparts and their development over the past four decades? Image 2 Cover Posters: A Concise History (1972) Image 3 Cover Posters: A Global History (2015) 2 Ibidem, pp. 4-5. 3 Ibidem. 3 © Twan Zijlstra, 2015 This essay’s outlines Among the numerous publications dealing with the history of the poster, are those written by art historian John Barnicoat and professor in design history Elizabeth E. Guffey. As evidenced by these book’s covers alone, they present different approaches towards the topic; Posters: A Concise History (1972) by Barnicoat treats the poster predominantly as an art form, emphasizing its interrelations with painting and explaining its development with reference to the Art Movements of the early twentieth century (Img. 2), whereas Guffey’s treatise, Posters: A Global History (2015, Img. 3), introduces itself as “a tale of posters as things, of material forms with which we spend our lives”.4 These two approaches represent the dichotomy in the world of movie poster design today, as will follow from the comparison that is central to this essay. In addition to the histories of the poster by Guffey and Barnicoat, works by design historians Patrick Cramsie and Stephan J. Eskilson on the history of graphic design will provide background information when called for, as well as. Then, the comparison will follow between a range of movie classic’s original posters and their alternatives as collected in Alternative Movie Posters: Film Art From the Underground. Alongside this comparison, an analysis of the development of the movie poster since the 1950s will further contextualize the alternative movie poster movement. Stylistic and technological changes that affected poster design over the last decennia, will be pointed out, as well as some of the most influential poster designers as described in Art of the Modern Movie Poster: International Postwar Style and Design (2008) by American film critic Dave Kehr among other works, with special attention to Saul Bass and his influence on today’s alternative movie poster. Poster history: the commercial versus the artistic The poster as a means of communication is generally understood to have come of age during the second half of the nineteenth century.5 Spurred by industrialization and the opportunities of mass production that came with it, notably the perfection of lithography techniques, the poster quickly developed to become a common sight in public space in the western world. It proved to be an effective vehicle for promoting industrial products (Img. 4), services (Img. 5) and cultural events, (Img. 6) as well as ideas (Img. 7). 4 Guffey 2015, p. 7. 5 Barnicoat 1972, p. 7, Eskilson 2007, p. 74. 4 © Twan Zijlstra, 2015 Image 4 Drooko (1898) Image 5 Gispen (1927). Image 6 Jules Chéret (1869). Image 7 Fritz Erler (1917) While the poster today is commonly thought of as a tool for advertising, its early days were strongly influenced by the arts.6 John Barnicoat described the early poster’s role as “translating the visual art movements of the twentieth century into consumer media”, indicating strong ties to the visual arts in terms of style.7 This connection came rather naturally, since the technology for poster production, lithography, had long been used for the purpose of reproducing visual artworks, as Barnicoat continues to explain.8 In fact, as he points out, early poster designers reestablished lithography as a creative medium. On the contrary, when focusing on a poster’s purpose in public space rather than on its aesthetics, as Elizabeth E. Guffey does, even back in the late nineteenth century, posters appear to be at the heart of capitalism. As Guffey puts it, the poster at the time “was not just a communicator but also a seller; it was so well established that it was hard to imagine selling goods any other way”.9 However different these definitions may sound, they are not necessarily conflicting. As Guffey acknowledges, mainly due to the introduction of illustration and color to the poster, it became a platform for artistic expressions as much as it already was a tool of commerce.10 In the late nineteenth century, the poster played a big part in defining the characteristics of Art Nouveau as it emerged in Europe, according to Patrick Cramsie.11 He also explains how, during this period, the distribution and public display of posters professionalized. This resulted in streets of major cities such as Paris, transforming into what Guffey calls a “gallery of the streets”.12 As it appears, it was no longer the question whether posters belonged to the artists or the advertisers; these worlds conjoined in the form of the poster, and it became one of the primary influences in both fields. 6 Barnicoat 1972, p. 7. 7 Ibidem. 8 Ibidem. 9 Guffey 2015, p. 42. 10 Ibidem, p. 43. 11 Cramsie 2010, p. 149. 12 Guffey 2015, p. 2. 5 © Twan Zijlstra, 2015 Posters and Cinema Even though posters might be considered instances of graphic design, it was only during the first half of the twentieth century, that graphic design became an independent profession, labeled as such, and that posters began to be claimed as part of a graphic designer’s remit, rather than an artist’s oeuvre. As a result, poster design became closely related to the design of music album covers and magazines, as noted by Stephen Eskilson, leading to an increased attention to typography in the designs.13 And this period brought about more changes to the poster, both in terms of purpose and style.14 Notable in the context of the movie poster, is the fact that Barnicoat points out the introduction of “camera devices, such as close-up, the zoom and the effect of a panning shot” into poster design, resulting from the growing dominance of the screen as a means of perceiving the world.15 Remarkably, this exchange between the poster and cinema worked both ways, as Guffey describes in a once again more commercial approach; according to Guffey, the poster played a big part in the success of Hollywood overseas.16 As she notes, the movie poster in particular brought a sense of optimism in the war-torn European streets, notably in Italy.