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Encapsulated and liberating: Eastern European graphics, 1960s and the archive

By jennifermchugh, on 10 June 2020

Jennifer McHugh

In one month’s time, I was meant to be taking my final research trip to investigate archival holdings in Budapest. Under travel restrictions and concern for safety amidst the pandemic, this fieldwork has been postponed at best, and at worst, possibly lost.  The ease of crossing borders and entering public archives is now suspended, making freedom of movement and accessibility all the more salient. This short piece addresses the importance of gaining access to physical archives to study art documents, arising from my PhD research project on Eastern European graphic communications and production of print design in the postwar period.  It is through the collection and preservation of these printed objects that we may know about them in the first place and the respective cultural and political moments they reflect for our collective memory and cultural heritage.

 Imagine a time capsule

 A sealed vessel, protective, firm yet fragile, stoppered at one end. In opening this vessel reveals a wealth of information, documents stored in a safe and sensitive environment so that we may see and interpret them today. These are the cultural objects, designed and printed with graphic image and text within a poster.

This considers the archive as a site of memory: one that has encapsulated ephemeral graphic expressions, moved from the openness of the street into a space for collecting. The poster, for example, acts as a tangible, material record through its use of symbolic imagery, text and aesthetic composition to communicate to the public. Its best device was to evoke semiotic meaning and often, double meanings, thus traversing into the world of the intangible, seamlessly entering the visual vernacular and public psyche. The poster occupied a visual and physical space, catching the eye and forcing the passer-by to engage and ideally, react. Creating a unique aura as an individual object, it also interacted with its immediate surroundings, forming links between objects and its allegorical contexts, becoming part of an aura in the greater landscape and immaterial way of being in the world.

 Why the poster?

While first painstakingly drawn by hand and transferred on to a lithographic stone or sheet of metal, it was then entrusted to the hands of the printer to reproduce in large format and multiplicity. Even so, these colourful and richly textured prints were not meant to last. Their ephemeral nature left them (in their A1 sheet of inked paper form) to interact with the world once pasted along hoardings or kiosks in the street and eventually to fade away. Unique to this fleeting medium is its appreciation by viewers for decades, compelling some to gather, collect and preserve them into what are today, dedicated collections and holdings within state libraries, art museums, private galleries, university special collections and auction houses.

How might stories be revealed in posters? The poster has an ability to act as a witness of living situations and character of a people. While small in physical size the poster became a principal actor evidencing public sentiment, transformed in to ‘instant historical documents’. (Sylvestrová 1992) The graphic designer is an intermediary in this process, utilising graphic tools and visual devices to create a unique sequence of coded information and ideas embedded within a poster. (Aynsley 1987)

Whence the archive

The archive acts as custodian, keeper and a means of preservation of posters. It considers the archive as a site of memory and taking a position of authority in the action of accumulating.

Acting as a place of documentation, the archive houses posters as records of social and political programmes, cultural events as well as a means of disruption and independent voice.

Archives act as source for interpretation. How do we derive information from these posters and glean their content for meaning? How do we query their place and positions within the archive and the way this information is codified to create narratives over and anew?  If not put forth and displayed, they remain sealed and hidden within the vessel.

Archives act as a system of management of a cultural heritage. These graphic records would be organised, classified, housed and stored according to international protocol for climate conditions and then made accessible for the public … or would they? Must they? To whom does this information belong or for what purposes?

The archive is not only a place but an accumulating practice, an ordering of material and immaterial information out of chaos, categorizing and creating a collection. Through its analysis the parameters of an archive emerge and begin to reveal what lies in the interstices (of our interpretation). This interstitial activity or ‘dust’ is described by Carolyn Steedman as the miniscule particles enveloping the researcher who becomes immersed in the masses of the archives and the ‘immutable, obdurate set of beliefs about the material world…’ (Steedman 2002, p. ix)

Liberated when removed, even if temporarily, from its box of dust within the archive to be brought into the open and illuminating the viewer, the poster is an example of raw data in a colour, text and textural format.  These graphics become entangled with the archive as depictions of a fixed moment in an interconnected system of ongoing, social and collective acts of remembering. (Piotrowski 2012) And it is through analysis of these archived posters there begins to unravel the rich complexities of meaning, technical skill, application of design principles and deep regional, cultural inferences present in them.

Artpool Archives, Budapest
(photo: Jennifer McHugh)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Aicher, O. (1994) The World as Design. Berlin: Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und Technishe Wissenschaftern.

Aynsley, J. (1987) ‘Graphic Design’, in Conway, H. (ed.) Design History: a Student’s Handbook. London: Unwin Hyman.

Benjamin, W. (1985) One Way Street and Other Writings. Translated by E. Jephcott and K. Shorter. London: Verso.

Blauvelt, A. (1994) ‘The Particular Problem of Graphic Design (History)’, in DeBondt, S. and de Smet, C. (eds.) Graphic Design: History in the Writing, 1983-2011. Occasional Papers: London.

Derrida, J. (1995) Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression. Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore.

Dilnot, C. (1989) ‘The State of Design History, Part II: Problems and Possibilities’, in Margolin, V. (ed.) Design Discourse: History/Theory/Criticism. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Drucker, J. (2014) Graphesis. Visual Forms of Knowledge Production. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.

Flusser, V. (1999) The Shape of Things. A Philosophy of Design. London: Reaktion Books.

Piotrowski, P. (2012) Art and Democracy in Post-communist Europe. London: Reaktion Books.

Rohonyi, C. (1951) ‘Poster Art in Hungary’, Graphis, 7(36), pp. 244-257.

Rose, G. (2016) Visual Methodologies. An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials. 4th edn. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne: Sage.

Spieker, S. (2008) The Big Archive. Art from Bureaucracy. Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press.

Steedman, C. (2002) Dust. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Sylvestrová, M. and Bartelt, D. (1992) Art as Activist: Revolutionary Posters from Central and Eastern Europe. London: Thames & Hudson, in association with Smithsonian Institution.

 

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Jennifer McHugh is a PhD candidate at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. She draws from an academic background in cultural heritage (Universitat de Girona), international relations (University of Sussex) and languages (University of Minnesota) and has worked in documentation and archives of graphics and design, museums and identity politics. Her research interests include graphic design, printing, geographies, contemporary archive practice and visual presentation of knowledge. (j.mchugh@soton.ac.uk)

 

The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author unless otherwise identified as referenced academic sources. This work follows principles of Fair Use; the images are photographs by the author.