For this project I had to chose a topic that is culturally relevant and produce a typographic statement that can instigate an action.
I chose the topic of racism within art, something that really does confuse and anger me.
To begin the project, I looked at pieces by:
FIONA BANNER
JENNY HOLZOR
JAMES VICTORE
I looked at these pieces for inspiration, I wanted my poster to be powerful and I wanted to make people think about what my poster is trying to say.
Each of the posters I have looked at are not overly complicated, they're very minimal and lets the subtle design and text do all of the talking.
Fiona Banner's work has always been something I like to look at, it's so aesthetically pleasing how all of the writing is confined into a perfect rectangle.
The all caps and bold single colour writing entices you to read it all, it also comes across as very powerful and loud.
Jenny Holzor and James victore have used subtle imagery which gets a strong message across.
MY POSTER.
To start my poster i chose this photo that i included in my intersemester booklet.
This picture is a drawing it did of one of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s piece of work.
Basquiat is one of my most favourite artists because of how expressive he is.
He was an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent living in a very dominantly white city, therefore he wasn’t very accepted and would get thrown hate. He’s done work where he referes to himself and depicts himself as the ‘Devil’ because that is what he was sometimes called.
His art has a lot of aggressive emotion in it and yoy can see it by the way he makes his marks with the mediums he uses.
2 years ago, an untitled piece of his work was sold for $110.5 million and all that comes to my head is, where was that support while he was still alive?
Now this, to me, is a perfect example of how race and ethnicity can change people’s opinions on art and i think it’s extremely sad to hear that people are racist towards art, something that has NO race.
'WHY MUST THE CREATOR EFFECT
HOW YOU SEE THE ART?' This is what i decided to put on my poster. I ask this question because i want people to think about what answers people could possibly have. People may look at this poster and ask why this question is even being asked, or not understand what the question is implying.
I wanted to put a painting of Basquiat’s as the background as its the painting that made me passionate about the experinces Basquiat emcountered in his life just because of his race.
I wanted to repeat the question over and over, in different fonts, different sizes, different formats and different colours because i wanted it to look hectic, i wanted it to look urgent because i want people to want to read it, i want their first reactions to be ‘what????’ and then followed by ‘ohhhhh!’.
I think I have successfully gotten my message across and I'd say my poster looks very loud and powerful, I'm sure people would stop to look at this poster just because of the colours I've used, they connote urgency and possible danger, so I think It would catch people's eye.