Take a look at some of the greatest posters designed for the Hayward Gallery from its recent book, On Display.
On Display, 2014
The Hayward Gallery has published On Display: 50 Posters Designed for the Hayward Gallery, a collection of posters selected from the Hayward Gallery’s archive by the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Curator of Posters and Prints, Catherine Flood. This large format publication comes with perforated pages, allowing you to adorn your home with the meaningfully sized and colour-corrected posters – if you can bring yourself to tear the pages out of a book, that is.
Show: Art in Revolution: Soviet Art and Design after 1917, 1971 Poster design: Edward Wright/Shenval Artwork: Liubov Popova, Production Clothing for Actor no. 7 in Fernand Crommelynck’s play The Magnanimous Cuckold, 1921Show: Contemporary Yugoslav Sculpture, 1970 Poster design: Paul Sharp/Robert Stockwell Ltd Artwork: Oto Logo, At the Heart 2, 1967Show: Arte Italiana: 1960‐1982, 1982‐83 Poster design: Pierluigi Cerri/Electa, Milan
Mainly focusing on the 1970s and 1980s, On Display contains posters by such luminaries of British design as Richard Hollis, Ken Garland, Theo Crosby and Neville Brody. A distinctively Total Design poster by Wim Crouwel and Arlette Brouwers for the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly: Painting and Sculpture is a pleasant surprise and contrast that shows the endearingly modest Britishness of many of the other posters.
The engaging introductory essay from Catherine Flood emphasises the critical side to On Display: it throws into relief the state of current exhibition posters at the bigger culture institutions. Using unequivocal language, Flood comments on the ‘reductive formulas’ employed in contemporary poster designs, stating that the focus of the posters “becomes the profile of the institution, with the art serving to reinforce the brand”.
Show: Ellsworth Kelly: Painting and Sculpture 1966‐79, 1980 Poster design: Wim Crouwel, Arlette Brouwers/Total Design, AmsterdamHayward Gallery’s winter exhibition programme, 1970‐1971 Shows: ‐ François Mansart: An Exhibition Illustrating the Work of the 17th Century French Architect ‐ Helen Sutherland Collection: A Pioneering Collection of the 1930s ‐ Gerhart Frankl 1901‐1965: Paintings and Works on Paper ‐ Derek Boshier: Recent Sculpture, Drawings and PrintsShow: Eisenstein: His Life and Work, 1898‐1948, 1988 Poster design: Richard Hollis
Looking at the era just before the rise of the marketing department, when a poster for a gallery show was about ‘communicating the character’ of the art on show, On Display communicates the vitality that well-commissioned design can bring to an institution’s visual expression. As both a nice object and an important, apposite comment on contemporary poster design, this is a book well worth keeping on your bookshelf – or you walls.
