Posterwire.com is a movie poster weblog. From images of the latest Hollywood one-sheets to vintage movie posters, this film poster weblog hopes to offer a bit of insight into film key art.
Four new teaser posters for the upcoming film V for Vendetta have been released. The movie, based on the Alan Moore comic, follows a freedom fighter known only as “V” who uses terrorist tactics to fight against a totalitarian English society. What makes the teaser posters interesting is the key art in each one-sheet embraces the style of political propaganda posters from the past — most notably Soviet.
Our favorite V for Vendetta teaser poster of the four features a silk-screen style limited color palette. The fan-boy site Ain’t-It-Cool-News labeled this poster as “Spanish & Argentian” in style. Not sure about that one — the bottom line is it’s recreating a poster style common to political propaganda posters from the past. (Reader Martin S. identifies this teaser as more Russian Leninist than the idealized Stalinist style.) AICN also identifies this Vendetta teaser as “German Expressionistic”, but it seems more inspired by the Russian Photomontage style as seen in this Russian propaganda poster. Since art history was never our strong subject, it’s hard to classify the specific style of each of these four teaser one-sheets. We invite everyone to share opinions on this in the comments section.
The poster as a piece of political propaganda has a long history across different cultures and regimes, including Chinese, American, Soviet, and Nazi.
The color palette and high contrast photo/illustration style remind me of the Stenberg Brothers. The typographic style looks like it has retro-propaganda aspirations, but still comes across as very contemporary.
Great link Rob. :)
How right you are! this graphic style is referred to as Constructivism and was popularized by Russian artists who believed the revolution was the answer to Russia’s problems. the Red, Black, and Cream motif was common in the Bauhaus movementwhich inspired artists all over Europe(Germany…Nazi period-although Hitler kicked forced most artists to flee the country as they were labeled as “degenerate artists”) .
By Nazi period, I should specify as between WWI and WWII. 1920-30’s. A lot was going on in the art world then. If you’re interested in similar art check out these links. And yes this Vendetta Poster is Awesome!
Constructivism artist-Rodschenko
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1923_one-sixth_part_of_the_world_poster_by_Rodchenko_for_film_by_Dziga_Vertov.jpg
Gustav Kluvstis russian poster
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~vbonnell/images/kluts_stal.jpg
another poster
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~vbonnell/posters.htm
Bauhaus color scheme…
http://www.sitographics.com/conceptos/fotos/bauhaus_poster.jpg
Franz Ferdinand album art curiously similar to Rodchenko
http://www.wippit.com/images/songs/Franz-Ferdinand~Take-Me-Out-2.jpg
[...] An obvious choice for movie poster of the year might be the series of one-sheets for the film V for Vendetta. We love that each poster embraced a slightly different style and variation of vintage “propaganda” poster art, but a slight criticism might be the ad campaign felt a bit unfocused and like an exercise that only graphic designers and “fan-boys” would really appreciate. [...]
[...] film V for Vendetta. We love that each poster embraced a slightly different style and variation of vintage “propaganda” poster art, but a slight criticism might be the ad campaign felt a bit unfocused and like an exercise that [...]