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AMERICAN FILMS
The Polish Museum of America
Part II: "American Films in Polish Posters" is at the Polish Museum of America, Chicago, from April 26 through May 30, 2002 -- a pleasure for the gallery visitor, a difficult task for a reviewer. While American artists and designers may know the names, or at least the work, a American general public will rely heavily on the gallery captions or the exhibition catalogue (all informative and in English). Still these posters seize the eye and stir the mind. They are not mere ephemera. Young students, working men, just passers-by, would often offer modest sums to those pasting them. Some gathered significant collections of an 'Art for the People.' Those works today are even more prized. They are fine art. What they have in common is high quality and a purpose. But they are more a decades-long event than a school or movement. More surprisingly, despite politics, changing circumstance, accelerating trends, the work of each succeeding artist remains his signature. Vocabularies alter; content shifts; there is experiment and growth. But an individual's work is recognized at once, unmistakably. This art still holds its force. How and why?
In many countries, for long periods, posters favored a 'menu' approach. They followed 'movie stars' -- manufactured personalities. They merely illustrated scenes... and then loaded in the type: credits, quotes, and hyperbole. Warsaw and Hollywood were galaxies apart. Polish artists sought the content of the film, often its rationale for being made. Elsewhere, words and marketing made the rules. In the U.S., actor contracts even held a "likeness clause" (a Pay for Painting Me demand). Central or 'top-billing'... subordinate status... even the size of type for an actor's name, were counted out in dollars and in cents. Polish posters favored strong images, suggesting the film's mood, genre: a core of act and consequence. Where a celebrity actor is featured, he is frequently treated as an icon for the substance revealed. As in much of multinational Europe, posters reached for a wide appeal; beyond language, beyond any single state. Right after World War II, folk art still endured, when all else was bombed and burnt. It gave new blood. Wycinanki is a Polish folk art in which floral designs, animals, even whole vignettes are constructed from colored papers, folded-in several times, and cut with shears. (Much like cutting decorative snowflakes, but far more intricate.) Matisse used the medium in his later collages. (One wonders to what degree some peasant art inspired him?) Marian Stachurski is represented by four posters in this show and in his work, direct and vigorous, he applied folk idiom to sophisticated ends. His poster to The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1959), based on Hemingway's book, serves as example. In the 1960s, Pop art entered as a fad, but Polish artists refined it in a fertile synthesis with folk art, stained-glass, and Modernist currents. In much Polish poster art, these currents seem naturally allied, rather than eclectic. The results are memorable. Jan Mlodozeniec similarly drew on folk art and proceeded over a long career to assimilate Pop art elements. His 1973 poster for Alan J. Pakula's detective-thriller, Klute (1971), bridges folk, Pop, and 'psychedelic art.' (Donald Sutherland played the detective searching for a suburban husband who disappeared in N.Y.C.; but Mlodozeniec's central image alludes to the call-girl (Jane Fonda) who last saw the victim). Much of his graphic sense anchors in a deceptively naive simplicity, areas of flat colors, thick black outlines, and, throughout it all, a humane warmth. A kindred synthesis of historical folk and commercial Pop (as American-defined) is found in posters by Wiktor Gorka. His 1968 poster for Richard Brooks film, The Professionals (1966), is a vibrant, curvilinear icon in black, red and orange. Earlier Modernist trends did persist after WWII. A viewer looks at Witold Janowski's 1962 poster for Edward Dmytryk's film,The Mountain (1956), and finds parallels with the work of Adolph Gottlieb or Franz Kline in the early Sixties. Here, bare geometric stylization distills the struggle of two brothers to scale a mountain, each seeking a crash site for conflicting reasons. Leszek Holdanowicz's 1970 poster to Larry Peerce's The Incident uses stark contours, and only black, grey, and red. In this image, two central silhouettes, a visual sequence in screams, are framed, trapped and choked, by grasping arms which form a boxed frame. It iconifies the story -- two drunken hoodlums terrorize riders in a N.Y.C. subway. These are not just images, but newly-crafted ideograms.
Beyond Modernist, folk, Pop, typographic, Expressionist, or Surrealistic conventions, the art of "American Films in Polish Posters" catches the eye, and offers a film precis, often with great ingenuity. When this work was created, artists confronted political restraints on sex or sensationalism, and even social and cultural behavior -- especially where political consequence was foreseeable. Co-curator, Piotr Dabrowski, records in his catalogue essay: "...for a few years (1949-1957) American films completely disappeared from Polish screens," adding: "An order of destruction of all posters of American movies in every Polish storehouse and archives was one of the craziest ideas of that time." ...Perhaps not so crazy. An Indonesian acquaintance once observed that, while Sukarno's regime censored U.S. films for sex and dangerous political ideologies, his people nonetheless saw Hollywood Yankees with tables full of food, citizens with creature comforts unthinkable to Indonesians. In the end, Sukarno fell from power. Dabrowski cites 1957 as a new start. De-Stalinization allowed American films back; and Waldemar Swierzy's Bulwar zachodzacego slonca (1957) for Billy Wilder's 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, served as an opener. Swierzy uses brief, collage-like elements to paint an icon of the heroine has-been, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), living in her past with her butler (played by Erich von Stroheim). The import of the film is vividly symbolized by Desmond's locks, which, as they fall out, turn to bits of old film. Polish Post-WWII posters advanced Expressionist and Surrealist genres, creating a definable 'emotive symbolism.' Often, a twist for the macabre enters in. Wiktor Gorka's Kabaret (1973), was executed for Bob Fosse's Cabaret, which had been released in the previous year. It sends a shock, it fascinates. Here, the Nazi swastika is transformed into a four-legged octopus, an alien form engulfing small people intent only on pursing their private lives, and only their private lives. The androgynous central face seems caught, either in song or in a scream. The prominence of this hackenkreuz was particularly unnerving to Polish movie-goers. In People's Poland, public display or trafficking in Nazi memorabilia (for want of any better word) was a serious offence against society. Poland had lost millions of souls and saw its major cities leveled in the war that followed the Weimar Republic. Kabaret itself was taken as a cautionary tale by many: the banal spawning of great evil. Often, what earlier in the West seemed antagonistic camps in art, appear in the Polish poster as a coherent, working visual and conceptual symbiosis. An artist such as Andrzej Klimowski illustrates this turn. "American Films in Polish Posters" offers several first-rate examples by this artist. His 1976 poster for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) draws on the conventions of Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp in collaged image; and yet his 1976 poster for The Godfather, Part II (1974) parallels an eerie, Dali-esque, arranged figurativeness: a three-piece suit, obviously inhabited, sits within an ornate oval picture frame -- but its face, any trace of individual identity or private life, is effaced by mist.
"American Films in Polish Posters" covers a comprehensive span of time, numerous currents, and it offers a representative sampling. The American theme in this selection adds a further, closer interest for Chicago. This is work intended for kiosks and public places. At times, a poster offers more than the film itself. And whether one cares about how these posters achieved their merit -- the histories and individual artists -- this exhibition is well worth close attention. In their time and place, their public expected to read between the lines in everyday life, demanded content and quality, welcomed and nourished this art. Fine artists engaged that public and the postwar Polish poster became a milestone of graphic art. "American Films in Polish Posters" presents work from 1947 through 2001. The forty-seven featured artists brought to graphic design inspirations from folk art, historical image, and various Modern genres. There are nearly a hundred posters from the collection of Piotr Dabrowski and Agnieszka Kulon, directors of The Art of Poster Gallery, Warsaw, Poland. "American Films in Polish Posters" will be at the Polish Museum of America, Chicago, from April 26 through May 30, 2002. A 32-page color catalogue for this exhibition contains 93 entries (less than those on exhibition), and 45 full-color illustrations, with a very informative essay by Piotr Dabrowski. The catalogue was sponsored by the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Chicago, and at ten dollars a copy, it is an excellent resource and a bargain. The posters are from The Art of Poster Gallery, ulica Przasnyska 14 m. 1, 01-756 Warsaw, Poland. (U.S.A. Tel./Fax: 773 252-6604). Their website is: http://theartofposter.com There artists represented are: Hanna Bodnar, Adam Bowbelski, Andzrej Dudzinski, Jakub Erol, Jerzy Flisak, Marek Freudenreich, Wiktor Gorka, Maria Heidrich, Maciej Hibner, Leszek Holdanowicz, Anna Huskowska, Maria "Mucha" Ihnatowicz, Wladyslaw Janiszewski, Witold Janowski, Andrzej Klimowski, Andrzej Krajewski, Kazimierz Krolikowski, Krzysztof Lenk, Edmund Lewandowski, Eryk Lipinski, Edward Lutczyn, Maciej Mankowski, Grzegorz Marszalek, Jan Mlodozeniec, Jozef Mroszczak, Jan Mucharski, Zygmunt Nirnstein, Andrzej Pagowski, Elzbieta Procka, Tomasz Ruminski, Wiktor Sadowski, Jan Sawka, Franciszek Starowieyski, Marian Stachurski, Jerzy Srokowski, Waldemar Swierzy, Maria Syska, Henryk Tomaszewski, Tadeusz Trepkowski, Jerzy Treutler, Wieslaw Walkuski, Mieczyslaw Wasilewski, Wojciech Wenzel, Maciej Woltman, Wojciech Zamecznik, Maciej Zbikowski, Bronislaw Zelek.
Finis Part II: --G. Jurek Polanski Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net. Editorial Note: Books mentioned in www.artscope.net are often in print and may be purchased through this site's Amazon.com link. Alan M. Fern is quoted from Word and Image: Posters from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art (The Museum of Modern Art/distributed by New York Graphic Society Ltd:1968). An excellent 239-page, well-illustrated reference (in Polish, English, and German) is Krzysztof Dydo's Masters of Polish Poster Art (Mistzrowie Polskiej Sztuki Plakatu) (Bielsko-Biala:Buffi:1995). Art historian, Zdzislaw Schubert, and Steven Heller are quoted from essays in this book. Heller is senior art director of The New York Times Book Review, editor of the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, and has authored or edited over thirty books on graphic design. A twenty-page catalogue with color illustrations, Masters of the Polish Poster, was published by the Chicago Department of Cultural affairs for an exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center in June, 1996. Of further interest is Contemporary Polish Posters in Full Color by Joseph S. Czestochowski (Dover:1979). A further wide selection of Polish posters, arranged alphabetically by artist as well as by theme, may be viewed at http://www.mrposter.com/aindex.html. Also of interest is http://www.contemporaryposters.com. |
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