Stroke. Art Fair 2

In my days as manager of the photographer David Hamilton a good part of our revenues were derived from licenses granted to the publishers of posters. At the art fair posters of all kinds were on display and on sale and were for the most part great examples of urgently edgy urban art.

When I first had dealings with poster houses such as Scandecor and Athena their catalogues were full of reproductions of paintings by old masters and kitsch photos of tropical sunsets. Some of these idyllic ‘vistas’ were large format, intended to be mounted on an expanse of wall. I fear that many a hobby basement had an Alpine panorama pasted onto the breeze-block construction.

David’s photos were a tiny breath of fresh air. Most of them were formatted for framing but there were some motifs produced to be stuck on doors. The one I chose for the inside of the door of my walk-in wardrobe in Paris was a constant delight, particularly when its presence was discovered by the young model featured in the photo (not the girl shown on the left!)

We never were able to convince Scandecor that en entire wall could be embellished with, for example, a photo of a minimally garbed corps de ballet. But my interest in wall décor remained and I have followed with interest the expansion of the catalogue of the firm Blik, who have specialized in ‘surface graphics’ since 2002.

At the Stroke Art Fair it was refreshing to see independents stepping into this arena. Just Pasted is an enterprise based in Nürnberg editing a limited series of large-scale wall imagery. I only wish I had the space to mount any of the art they have on offer.