Process(3)- Polish posters

Where ideas come from

It doesn’t just pop out of your head without something else having been popped in there first. It might feel like it sometimes; you were inspired and an idea just came to you without resistance. This is a beautiful moment for an artist and it is tempting to believe you are unique and wonderful because you came up with a great piece of art. You are unique and special, we are all unique and special, but the ideas are not exactly new. They are an amalgam of all the art, culture and day-to-day life that has been observed and consumed by you. It sits in you and mixes around until you are asked to pluck something out. And what comes out is a hybrid of it all. It is part of you and part of everything you have seen before. That way, it is recognisable and familiar to others but observably fresh. It has not been seen before in this particular guise. It is not until you break it apart that you start to see the origins of it. (There is, of course, another type of art, that which has been poorly copied to the verge of plagiarism, but that’s a different discussion.)

The picture books I grew up with somehow managed to occupy much of my real world and still do to some extent. The boundary between the illustrations and my reality was often indistinct. They informed my reactions to the real world in quite profound ways. The local woods and beaches where I grew up could have been plucked straight from a story book and I often confused my imagination with reality in the way only children and psychonaughts can. My mum fully enabled this, counting the fairies and and giant’s footprints on wild walks in the woods with the dog. It was a magical time and the places we played then are still full of magic now. Which is why I am glad to be back living near my childhood home.

As I grew up, the transformative effect of art didn’t lose its potency. And I realise now, my mum was always there influencing and enabling my artistic development. It was while struggling for inspiration working on a recent commission that this influence struck me. Racking my mind for a suitable aesthetic, I remembered these film and theatre posters populating the walls and ceiling of my mum’s shop ‘The Rolling Stone’ in the 1990s. She became the sole distributer for Polish posters in Scotland in the 1990’s when her supplier was convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover. His lawyer called one day to tell her the news and asked if she would take over the distribution of the posters. So, during my formative years in art, I was surrounded by these posters. We had tons of them. They were vibrant and surreal, loud and colourful.

Images courtesy of www.polishpostergallery.com

They must have left an imprint on my subconscious, for when I pulled out a old book from my shelf called ‘Plakaty’ by Krzysztof Dydo (A compendium of contemporary Polish posters from 1989 to early 2000s), I was surprised, somewhat pleasantly, at how similar my illustrations are to the posters in this book. Not in style so much as the feeling and tone. There is a familiarity of delivery rather than a direct copy of the style. Polish posters come in many different styles and mediums but they all have a certain quality to them, which is quite difficult to define. They span many forms of art from surrealism to cubism to constructivism to pop art. There is no defining genre for Polish posters but somehow they have a feel about them, an attitude maybe. And they have a rich origin.

I couldn’t possibly do justice to the history of Polish posters in this short piece. I can only say that the art of the poster has evolved in lock-step with the history of modern Poland. With its roots in the Krakow based Young Poland movement (1890-1914) it has survived partition, invasion, war, revolution, counter revolution and now capitalism.

After the second world war, the communist state supported artists and paid them well for commissioned work but the criteria was clear; educate the public on the arts and the intellectual superiority of the communist regime. The poster was relegated to a propaganda tool. However, many artists managed to smuggle in their opposition to the regime through tone and artistic subversion, which I think has helped define the humour of the Polish poster.

Towards the mid 1950s and into the 1960s, criteria governing artistic expression was relaxed and no longer limited to soviet realism. There was an explosion in styles and techniques but there was still a predominant lean towards promotion of ‘the arts’. The poster was seen again as a propaganda tool, but this time it would be used to promote the ‘progressive’ Polish art scene. And the arts poster was the most venerated. Film and theatre played a critical role in the establishment of the Polish poster as an artistic product in itself.

Since 1989 the poster scene has had to compete with western media without the support of the communist regime. Only the best posters survived. It is a different landscape now but the flavour of its origins is still felt. And I realise now that the attitude of the Polish poster has had a profound effect on my approach as an artist.

They are a collector’s item. There are rare gems from the 1960s and up to the minute limited prints that garner great attention from connoisseurs all over the world. When I was 18, I went to California for a few months. I was sleeping on the floor of a stranger’s house near Venice Beach L.A. when one evening, his estranged father turned up at the door. This man was intimidatingly interesting. He talked in a dusty drawl about things I could not relate to. Recovering from addition. On the road for years in Mexico. He looked suspiciously like Bob Dylan. He had great boots. And he made a neglected little guitar with five strings that none of us had payed any attention to, sing the blues. I had nothing interesting to say to this man, but he was polite enough to listen, if somewhat disinterestedly. But when I mentioned Polish posters, his eyes lit up. He was a collector. His poster collection had been in a lock-up since his last divorce but he talked animatedly about it. We exchanged numbers and he promised to come visit the shop if he was ever in Scotland. He never did.

The posters are internationally regarded but I wonder if Polish people themselves notice how unique they are. My wife is Polish and while she recognises the posters from the columns in town squares and outside theatres, she previously did not recognise them as pieces of art in themselves. They are just posters to her. They do the job of advertising the play of film or whatever. Her parents and friends too are rather puzzled that I have an interest in them. This is strange to me because, prior to meeting my wife, my entire naïve conception of Polish culture was mostly garnered from these posters. And while my in-laws, don’t recognise the posters as something special or unique, I recognise my in-laws in the poster. I recognise their humour, their culture, their veneration of the arts.

Polish posters have helped define an entire culture for me and probably for many other people too. They are a potent visual art form and a unique insight into the psyche of Poland. And they have left a unique imprint on me too. Along with the picture books from my childhood, the films, comics, computer games and a few ‘great artists’, these posters have nestled themselves in my mind, been infused with the humour of my unique biome, cultivated in bonnie Scotland, and bloom every so often in my illustrations.