The Czech music poster, from the 1970's to the present, or, normalization, McDonaldization and attempts at normality. The project explores all that defies fossilised social systems, past and present, and that upsets the establishment.
Following on from the exhibition by Zdenek Primus The Pope
Smoked Dope - Rock Music and Alternative Visual Culture in the
1960s (GHMP, Dům U zlatého prstenu, 3.6.-18.9. 2005) an exhibition
of Czech music posters from the past forty years has been prepared
by Karel Haloun in collaboration with the Moravian Gallery in Brno.
The exhibition hopes to arouse the interest of the general public,
but primarily those who were "where it was at"- artists, musicians,
casual and real collectors, as well as listeners who actively
contributed to building this unique collection which will be part
of the extensive graphic design collections of the Moravian Gallery
in Brno.
The exhibited collection, called The GIFT, covers posters from all
possible music genres from concerts, festivals and other music
events, to promotional posters for individual bands. On the
seemingly restricted background of promotional design in music, the
project's ambition is to present more general, broader and
revealing evidence of the social climate of that period. As a
result, it does not only contain posters which are immediately
eye-catching due to their high standard of artistic design. The
exhibition tries to cover a broad spectrum of thematic areas such
as samizdat posters, concert posters, music-club posters,
festival posters, publishers' posters, posters of village dance
bands, DIY posters, posters for events of a private, semi-official
and purely regional nature, as well as various oddities. It takes
an interest in everything that has been eroding the rigidity of
past and present social systems and upsets the establishment.
Complemented by exhibits from the collection of the Moravian
Gallery in Brno the exhibition simultaneously documents evidence of
the official promotion of pop stars, jazz, art-rock,
symphonic orchestras, folk ensembles, brass bands, variety music
shows and takes note of the involvement of show-business
stars in today's advertising.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a detailed catalogue
prepared by Karel Haloun and Jan Čumlivský, in collaboration with
Václav Havlíček, which the author of the project describes thus:
"The ambitions of the catalogue go beyond the framework of the
usual presentation and cataloguing of the exhibits. It should be
something of a game, which would actually not be a bad title for
the exhibition as well. In the spirit of the game it is not fair to
reveal more at the moment."
Designers shown at the exhibition
Vladimír Ambroz, Bratrstvo, Petr Bosák, Tomáš Brousil, Pavel
Büchler, David Cajthaml, Michal Cihlář, Jan Dungel, Jiří Eliška,
Pavel Fuksa, Jakub Hošek, Karel Haloun, Adam Hoffmeister, Václav
Houf, Jaroslav Hutka, Tomáš Chorý, Ivo Janík, Robert Jansa,
Miroslav Jiránek, Ivana Jurná, Miroslav Kloss, Jef Kratochvil, Petr
Krejzek, Klára Kvízová, Jan Kříbek, Luděk Kubík, Zuzana Lednická,
Jan Malý, Boris Mysliveček, Aleš Najbrt, Robert V. Novák, Jan
Pacák, Zdeněk Paták, Rudo Prekop, Jaroslav Prokop, Zorka Ságlová,
Joska Skalník, Michal Škapa, František Štorm, Petr Váša, Dušan
Ždímal, Vladimir 518 and others.