If you live near a town which has a Flatstock show, take the time to check it out. Seeing them all the time, it's sometimes easy to forget that posters aren't just advertising. They can also be outstanding examples of popular art. So buy a few, frame them, and put them on your walls. There's something for every taste, from hip to humor to horror.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
1 - Richard Marcus
Nice one Dave - I've recently re-discovered poster art myself through a couple of folk art sites on the web. What I find most interesting is the inter-relationship between the folk art movement and poster art - especially when it comes to the roots rock and blues bands. The one does a great job of capturing what it is about the music that appeals to so many - a kind of home spun, do it yourself quality that distinguishes it from corporate rock.
Cheers
Richard Marcus
2 - Dave Nalle
You've got a point about the corporate vs. indy rock thing. On reflection virtually none of the posters at this show were for major corporate acts, though some were for very successful indy rock groups like Vampire Weekend, which certainly sell a lot of tracks.
Hip hop is also generally not represented in this kind of poster art. They have their own weird sub-genre of poster design which is not very folk art but can sometimes be very creative - if you count making bling extra shiny in photoshop as a skill.
Dave
3 - Dave Nalle
My next job is to get the posters I bought at the show - primarily the first and last ones pictured in the article - mounted in some durable and non-destructive way.
Dave
4 - zingzing
scattered around here in brooklyn, there's so many collage-style xerox posters that little experimental bands put up on walls and poles. i'd like to steal a few, but they usually tape over them completely in clear tape, just so you can't rip off the little pieces of art. sucks.
5 - Dave Nalle
Xeroxed collage posters are a sub-genre closely associated with the punk era and I think that in the long term some of them are going to be regarded as real art. As you point out, to some extent their value is enhanced because they are so much less likely to survive.
Here in Austin we have bulletin boards in all the coffee houses where posters of all kinds are tacked up and aren't taped down, so they have a fair chance of survival. I check them out periodically and remove good posters from shows which just happened, before some barrista has a chance to trash them.
Dave
6 - Heloise
You sound like people who live in NOLA. We had no inerest in Mardi Gras except for it to go away. I will try to get to SXSW for the Word camp which is nearly free.
7 - Dave Nalle
Is that a camp to learn to use MS Word or a camp to learn to use words in general better.
Dave