One of my choices for the The Gesamt Kunstwerk Project is specifically the movie poster art work of Drew Struzan. Before anyone could just take pictures of others or gather images from Google images and photoshop them together and post them online, most movie posters were hand painted, some of the most distinctive ones were stylized to grab the peoples attention with exotic color choices, character and background layouts and even small part of one or two scenes as a way to capture the size and scope of the movie, one of the artist who is best known for this style is Drew Struzan.
Drew Struzan is an american illustrator and painter, best known for hand painting posters for movies, he first started off by painting Album covers for music bands, such as: Alice Cooper, The Beegees and Black Sabbath, he then slowly transitioned into the movie business, but only doing small B movies that didn’t leave that much of an impression on people, that was until in 1977 when he was asked to paint the poster for the movie that kick started his popularity that movie was called ‘Star Wars’, after that he continued to paint many more poster for many famous mainstream movies, most notably George Lucas and Steven Spielburg proporties, in fact around the early days when they started making posters by photoshoping the main actor into a blank back ground, Struzan was comminisioned to paint posters for the Star Wars prequal trilogy decades after the original trilogy ended.
Known Movie posters he made:
- Star Wars (The original and prequel trilogy) (1977-2005)
- Indiana Jones (1981-2008)
- Back to the future (Part 1,2,3) (1985-1990)
- The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
- E.T: The Extra Terrestrial (1982)
- The Green mile (1999)
- The Thing (1982)
- Harry Potter and the Philosipher’s Stone (2001)
- Blade Runner (1982)
- Hook (1991)
Why do I like his work?
I like how each poster gives a layout of the movie, displaying the main characters, locations and even particular scenes, also the artistic style really draws you into the movie even before you watch it, rather then posters today that just photoshop the actors in a blank back ground.
What does his work mean to me?
When I look at his work, it’s make me as well many others to belive, that he like the rest of the film crew working on the movie that he is putting in months if not years of dedication into one film, he wants to encourage others to experience the action, drama and magic of the movie, the kinds of posters he does (as well as many other people who create these kinds of posters) prove he’s seen the movies, rather then just reading a short plot summary or watching the trailer, he shows off the best of what to see in these movies, what’s worth seeing (e.g Andy Dufresne’s escape in Shawshank Redemption, Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan’s Exciting and heartbreaking duel in Star Wars Epidsode III Revenge of the Sith or the invitation to monsters, magic and Wizardry in Harry Potter.
Here’s a link to his website for his artwork, including: Album covers, comic covers, movie posters, products, unused posters, etc
Ewan's Art Blog 