Film and Music Advertising
Ever since the mid-twentieth century, younger generations have seen musicians as lifestyle and fashion role models. Their avid interest in the recording industry helped spur the fad for displaying innovative poster art. In Grace Jones’s photographic poster for a 1981 album, her defiant, androgynous figure suggests not only new trends in fashion but a chic conflation of gender stereotypes and more liberal attitudes toward sexual difference. The film industry also continued to employ poster advertising that featured dramatic portraiture.
Throughout its history, the poster has proven to be remarkably flexible as an art form, adapting in each generation to emerging graphic styles, different industries, fresh marketing strategies, and new passions. Despite many new forms of advertising, a life-size stand-up of Johnny Depp from the Pirates of the Caribbean, or the same image in a banner two stories tall, still captures our attention, informing and entertaining us.
Carmen Jones Dorothy Dandridge Unidentified artist, 1954 Color photolithographic poster with halftone 195.4 x 104.9 cm (76 15/16 x 41 5/16 in.) National Portrait Gallery © 20th Century Fox Film Corp. |
Qualcuno Volo’ Sul Nido del Cuculo (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) Jack Nicholson Unidentified artist c. 1975 Color photolithographic poster with halftone 198.8 x 139.5 cm (78 1/4 x 54 15/16 in.) National Portrait Gallery; acquired through the generosity of David C. Ward | |||||
Apocalypse Now Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen Bob Peak, 1979 Color photolithographic halftone poster 104 x 68.6 cm (40 15/16 x 27 in.) National Portrait Gallery; gift of Saul Zalesch © 1979 Omni Zoetrope | A Tribute to the Music of Thelonious Monk Thelonious Monk Niklaus Troxler, 1986 Color silkscreen poster 128 x 89.8 cm (50 3/8 x 35 3/8 in.) National Portrait Gallery Division © 1986 Grafik-Studio Niklaus Troxler Willisau/Siebdruk Bosh AG, Luzern |
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Grace Jones/Nightclubbing Grace Jones Unidentified artist, c. 1981 Color photolithographic halftone poster 81.7 x 53.1 cm (32 3/16 x 20 7/8 in.) National Portrait Gallery; gift of Chisholm Larsson Gallery |
Pirates of the Caribbean Johnny Depp Unidentified artist, 2003 Color photolithographic halftone poster stand-up 182.9 x 95.4 cm (72 x 37 9/16 in.) National Portrait Gallery; gift of the John Daniel Reaves family © Walt Disney Studios |
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