COP: Polish Poster Palooza (NEEDS TO BE EDITED))

Since the beginning of COP 3, I knew I wanted it to relate to films in some way or another, as my essay question developed the natural progression of my practical did too. In my initial statement I talk about wanting to create movie posters. As the weeks of my practical have progressed I've moved further away from trying to draw the characters in my own style, and closer to collage to create a scene as I did in my About The Author Brief last year. The movies I've been looking into are all very atmospheric and I think collage might be the way forward for it to create a feeling. When I spoke to Pete about this he suggested talking to Ben, so that rather than going straight into making collages I could look into collage relating to movie and learn about the background. 

POLISH POSTERS 
So I went to speak to him and he showed me a lot of different practitioners and explained why Polish posters are so different to western ones. During ww2 Polish culture was suppressed to the extreme by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the point where thousands of artists and scholars were executed. The polish people were only allowed to display posters that had been approved by the invaders, and during the war they didn't want any american propaganda so posters were not allowed to contain the faces or bodies of actors within them. Polish people created underground networks to develop their art in secret but a mass of works were destroyed and any creative outputs were monitored closely. As a result of this when the war was over and they were no longer occupied by Germans or the Soviet, the Polish art community had a lot of catching up to do. They had missed out on key art periods during their long suppression so Polish art development is very different to the rest of the world so it's only natural that their posters developed differently too. 

Polish posters focus more on the themes and atmosphere of the film, rather than taglines or promoting actors, the posters promote the narrative itself. 

ANDRZEJ KLIMOWSKI 

Andrzej Klimowski is a English Illustrator born to Polish emigre parents but is a well known name in Poland. After being raised among british culture Klimowski moved to Warsaw Poland where he became a well known poster artist. 

His work is very conceptual, often using angels, demons and collage to bring together posters that communicate the theme without revealling too much. Here is his poster for The Omen, a young boy with a demon sat upon his shoulders. In many ways this illustration is far more effective than it's west counterpart as seen below by American Illustrator Tom Jung (seen below it). Although both posters favour the black and white format, Jung's poster has more text to draw the eye from the illustration, I guess everyone has their own opinion on what makes a great poster but for me, I prefer a sense of mystery about a poster. The westernised Jung The Omen poster already tells you what you are in for, through the text and the image of concerned parents onlooking to a young boy. Where in contrast Klimowski's poster reveals nothing other than an unnerving child's body and demonic symbology sat on it's shoulders. It tells us the same (perhaps more) than Jung's version but it is less crowded.. more precise.