Poster Collection – serie

Iranian graphic design looks back on a brief history. The first poster designers completed independent artistic training and created painterly-illustrative works in the 1960s. The simultaneous opening to the West under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi promoted global cultural exchange. With the proclamation of the Islamic Republic in 1979 and the First Gulf War (1980–1988), however, this was rapidly interrupted. At the end of the 1980s, a new generation of designers took up the graphic heritage of the pre-war period. At the turn of the millennium, the Iranian poster finally conquered international festivals and caused a great stir in the Western community. The volume Contemporary Iran brings together Iranian cultural posters from 1960 to the present. Despite the many different creative approaches, they always demonstrate the search for a fusion of history and contemporaneity, Iran’s own tradition and Western inspiration, art and everyday culture. An often unorthodox interpretation of Persian cultural heritage is combined with the confident use of computer-generated graphics. Thus, some posters confirm common Western notions of Islamic aesthetics, while others radically undermine them and irritate and surprise us.

Peace appeals, reminders of human rights, calls to protect nature – posters have proven an effective medium in accompanying social and political struggles worldwide since the 1920s. Through the poster, these universal and timeless topics are able to reach a broad public and encourage critical debate. While some posters are meant to shed light and are aimed at reflection, others appeal more strongly to the emotions of their audience. Some dismantle past and present autocrats cynically, ironically or humorously – while others construct idols that exemplify a different world. Dystopian images function as a provocation and warning, while utopian messages keep the belief in change alive. Symbols such as the raised fist or the dove of peace demonstrate their global and lasting power in ever new interpretations. Proven visual formulas and argumentation strategies are taken up in posters of the latest civil protest movements and are supplemented by new rhetoric. The designers, acting individually or collectively, are united by commitment and an emancipatory attitude as well as the conviction that resistance requires its own aesthetic in order to function. The publication brings together works from around one hundred years that demonstrate the tradition of the poster as a medium of protest and assert its validity and necessity in the present day.