 |
|
|
|
Art Review Archives:
|
Street Talk: The Rise and Fall of the Poster
224 pages, full color throughout
Posters are increasingly overlooked in favor of other media forms, the Internet primary among them. At the same time the public space available for posters is ever more encroached upon by big-business advertisers. Does the poster, specifically the poster in the U.K. in this book by British designers, still have relevance in this day and age? Holding this as its central premise, Street Talk: The Rise and Fall of the Poster presents a loosely organized collection of photos, graphics and writings, in spirit more design gazette than book proper. Interleaved in these pages are a retrospective of the posters of British graphic designer Malcolm Frost; thirty-three atmospheric photographs capturing the grit and graffiti of the urban British street; two detailed essays analyzing the fate of the poster and the fabric of street culture in the face of pressure from electronic media and advertising; two short illustrated pieces discussing, respectively, the use of the fleur-de-lis logo in Florence, Italy, and the use of buildings as message-carriers via king-sized lettering; and the winning thirty-five posters from a student graphic design competition of alternative covers for the book itself. Most compelling are the arguments forwarded by Angharad Lewis and Aidan Winterburn regarding the poster's commitment to captivating design over mere sell-me advertising force. Both find the poster an integral component of the urban street as public environment, an environment whose democratic character as a public forum for mass communication is threatened by legislation attempting to downplay creative freedom in fly-posting, while at the same time, backed by the business dollar, "crass advertising colonizes the street." Winterburn identifies public space as the location for "street culture", as a "theatre of signs", a function aided and supported by the artistic content of the poster. As the poster is pushed out of place, the street diminishes, from a locale rife with communication of ideas to one dominated by consumerism. In this threatened public environment, advertisers buy up public space to fill it with consumer-oriented ads, diluting street 'character' with purely ad-oriented advertising rather than quality graphic design. Posters diversify and enrich the cultural experience; advertising, Winterburn notes, only pretends to court the individual, while secretly seeking to make everything the same. The balance of the book is given over to selected posters of British designer Malcolm Frost, whose recent credits also include Malcolm Frost: Graphic Design for Architects. In Street Talk Frost's poster collection mingles personal reminiscences by the author with a selection of forty-nine of his poster commissions on a variety of subjects. Similar to Images Publishing's study of Italian designer Massimo Vignelli in Lella and Massimo Vignelli, Frost's commentary is anecdotal, touching briefly on the circumstances surrounding the making of each poster. While some may enjoy the narrative approach others might find it discursive, a factor compounded by the fact that the posters themselves receive no annotation as to title, date, or project, making it an effort to cross-reference them with the author's text. To further complicate matters Frost's posters are printed in small size, two to a page, reducing each to the modest dimensions of a playing card. This all but subsumes them to the visual pull of the glossy two-page spreads tucked in between the poster sections and featuring fine art photographs of Britain's urban streets. Dominating the book with their broad, colorful largesse, these street photos are, surprisingly, meant to illustrate civic decay in a posterless society. That they are intended to be decried, rather than admired, is completely unexpected, given their commanding size, bright color and carefully artful presentation, which gives them prominence over and above the posters themselves. The most telling images in delivering the book's message are two modest photographs introduced by Aidan Winterburn. The same intersection is seen in photos taken years apart. In one is revealed the cleverness of the poster, a rich array of art and design: posters for Guinness, Jacobs, Morris, brand names certainly, but in memorable images, something one might take home simply to enjoy. On the other side is the same intersection, now planted with a modern billboard, its ads trite, sterile and forgettable. It is a fitting reminder of the importance of the poster and a clarion call for its continued vitality as both art form and means of mass public communication, a rich visual component in the public arena. --Katherine R. Lieber Katherine R. Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.
Editorial Note:
|
Home | Art Reviews | Bookstore | eArtist |Galleries | RSS
Search | About ArtScope.net | Advertise on ArtScope.net | Contact
