The Horror

My appreciation of art began not with "fine art" at all. It started with an appreciation for creative and aesthetic mediums outside from the gallery, museum, or other "fine art" outlets. As I believe is common with many artists and art fans my age, I was led to fine art through cartoons, comic books, and advertising design. Skateboard graphics, album covers, and even breakfast cereal boxes were vastly more engaging than anything framed on a white wall, and it was a love of movies and music videos that led to me art college in the mid-1990s.

These days, I'm saturated with fine art. Running a gallery, publishing art books, and being a working studio artist trying to keep abreast of the art world has me constantly inundated with high art and the lowbrow art that is currently high art. Frankly, I often feel uninspired and weighed down by the constant barrage of "fine art" and "fine artists". I even take steps to try to stay out of the incessant stream of art world opinions and discussions, but they seem to find me anyway.

So when I'm looking for inspiration or just something to get the creative stoke flowing again, I head back to the roots and look towards non-art artworks to refresh me. Luckily, between the internet and a healthy stream of compilation art books, there are plenty of archives to reference and appreciate.

Nosferatu 1922

One of my current favorites is Horror Poster Art, edited by Tony Nourman and Graham Marsh. It was published in 2004 by Aurum Press in the UK and part of a large series of movie poster books by Nourman and Marsh. This 12 x 9 inch book features neaqrly 200 pages of full color reproductions from over 80 years of horror film poster art. From early silent movies to B monster flicks to foreign cinema classics and even more, this book covers some film favorites and some great design work for less-than stellar movies. 

Hӓxan (Heksen) 1922
The Invisible Man 1933

The design of movie posters seems to be a lost craft these days, where artistic creativity and bold designs are almost always tossed aside in favor of giant celebrity headshots or photos with digital manipulated backgrounds.

Some of the really interesting pieces come from the foreign versions of American horror films, such as the Czech Psycho poster by Zdenek Ziegler or the Polish Alien (Obcy) poster by Jakub Erol. Often the artists making these posters were given only a title and brief summary of the film to work from. The Eastern European posters are famous for their abstract and conceptual designs. Awesome stuff.

Along with the bold images of the posters in the book there is commentary on the artists, the style, or other commonalities within the film subgenres.

Another great movie poster art book I own is Who Goes There?. It features 1950's horror and sci-fi movie posters and lobby cards. This was just a great era for charming B horror and monster movies, and often the posters and artwork (as well as art direction for the films) is far superior to the acting and story within the films themselves.

And, finally, a while back I purchased Vintage Hollywood Posters III. Rather than an art book, this is an auction catalog for a sale in June of 2000. This catalog covers far more than just old horror films, and has the bonus of having the estimated values of the posters printed under each image (they go for anywhere between $500 and $10,000). 

All three of these books costs around $20 when I got them (the Horror Poster Art book was £19), but it seems like all three are out of print now. I'm sure you can find them around the net used, or lots of other similar books. 

I'm very happy that lots of design media that originally created for promotion or packaging is now being appreciated as art... and that publishers are compiling books like these for us to enjoy.

Dracula: Prince of Darkness 1965