Dan's Papers - October 19, 2007 - art commentary With Marion Wolberg Weiss

It's a given that posters can be, and have been, great examples of fine art. A case in point is the recent exhibit at the Whitney Museum, "Summer of Love," where posters were visual icons representing a unique time and place. Other aesthetic forms, like performance art, concerts and movies could celebrate the "Hippy Movement" extremely well, but it was poster art that often captured the era's essential spirit in a configuration people could take home and keep forever.

While posters created by well-known artists for the Hamptons International Film Festival will probably not achieve a place in the archives of cultural history, they may occupy a position in the annals of movie posters. The reason is simple enough: the Hamptons Film Festival contributors do not ordinarily produce posters nor is it likely that their works will be published in poster form anytime soon. Where else, then, can you buy a Cindy Sherman poster for a very reasonable price but at last year's Festival? One that may increase in value (like Andy Warhol's poster did when he made one for the New York Film Festival during the early 1960s).

The point is this: the posters are valuable because of the artists' importance, not because they were made for the Hamptons Film Festival. In fact, this critic disagrees with the premise that almost "every Film Festival poster uses the cinematic context to suggest a genre reading." We would even say that some artists merely contibuted work they had already done to be used for a poster, much to their credit, of course.

For example, Eric Fischl's 1993 poster showing two female couples engaged in a suggested sexual encounter is strictly Fischl, his themes and styles having little to do with an adaptation to the Film Festival's objectives. In fact, his art has always been cinematic, with or without a film festival assignment. Fischl's 2004 poster, featuring a close-up of a couple, is again a vehicle for the artist's recurring worldview concerning relationships, with no interaction between the couple and certainly no engagement with the viewer. Yet it matters little that it was or wasn't created especially for the Film Festival. It's a gem, pure and simple. We can discern no connection to film or the Festival in David Salle's posters (1994, 1998) either, his fragmented images associated more with his own signature traits than suggesting cinematic montage.

Ross Bleckner's work, although appearing "dreamy" like a movie experience, has more to do with the ironic beauty of possible malignant cells seen under a microscope, again a potent, consistent Bleckner theme. Jim Gingerich's poster from 2000 is another example of a recurring visual in much of the artist's work: a man is running away, not to fulfill some Hollywood plot, but to protest the disappearing Hamptons landscape. This interpretation is, quite obviously, bound to a particular place and time, and not to any art form.

The posters that are directly associated with the Film Festival and created just for the occasion are the least effective, unfortunately, because the artists simply were not using their considerable imaginations, instead opting for a "commercial" take on the Festival. All in all, however, the poster collection is enjoyable to see and well worth a visit. Hats off to The Gallery, site of the exhibit, and to Rebecca Cooper, The Gallery's director.

The exhibit will be on view through The Hamptons Film Festival weekend at 125 Main Street, Sag Harbor. Call 631-725- 7707.