Krzysztof Cichoń in Conversation with Tadeusz Piechura

Krzysztof Cichoń: The birth of the poster in the nineteenth century was accompanied by fierce disputes over whether the poster could truly be considered art. Does that question remain unresolved? When does a poster become something more than a meticulously crafted component of a marketing machine designed to capture the viewer’s senses and wallet?

Tadeusz Piechura: The poster is Art with a capital “A”. The poster is king in the field of graphic design.
K.C. Emotion or intellect? In what proportions do they appear in your work?
T.P. One hundred per cent intellect.
K.C. Would you make — do you make — posters without a commission?
T.P. Yes. Since 1993, I have designed my own screen-printed posters, produced at the Screen-Printing Centre of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź.
K.C. Apart from their subjects, what distinguishes a cultural poster from, for example, a social, political or commercial one?
T.P. Nothing distinguishes them. This division into categories is artificial and serves the needs of biennials and triennials, of which there are now more than twenty-five around the world, in Europe, Asia and North America.
K.C. You would not make a poster for…?
T.P. A drawer…
K.C. Whose work interested and inspired you during your studies, and whose interests you today?
T.P. I have always looked for my own path, both as a student and after graduation. I designed photographic, typographic and Constructivist posters. I never sought inspiration and never yielded to any client.
K.C. The best poster in the world is…?
T.P. The Japanese and Swiss poster.
K.C. Art is sometimes said to give us insight into such elements of the world as good, evil, truth and beauty. In your view, do posters ever become entangled in such metaphysical concerns?
T.P. No. My posters do not become entangled in metaphysics.
K.C. Can the same poster establish a presence and attract attention on a street in both Paris and Łódź? Do visual and pictorial codes and conventions still differ between national cultures?
T.P. The same poster can establish a presence and attract attention on a street in either Paris or Łódź.
K.C. Which carries more weight: inspiration drawn from a text, as with a poster for a Shakespeare play, or the urban scale of the street’s iconosphere, within which the poster must be visible?
T.P. A theatre or film poster is usually displayed in a showcase, where it attracts the viewer. Posters on pillars or hoardings most often form a complete rubbish heap and cannot defend themselves, even though they are visible.
K.C. Contemporary Polish graphic design is… (invisible?).
T.P. Commercialism and a lack of commissions. A complete disaster. See nothing, hear nothing, say nothing and feel nothing. Specimens from the natural world, the remains of rare and exotic animals, and examples of various pathologies and “freaks of nature”, such as the proverbial two-headed calf. The creators of Cabinets of Curiosities aspired to construct complete microcosms: representations of the World as a Collection. From a political point of view, Kunstkammers were allegories of their founders’ power, encompassing within their gaze the entirety of reality compressed into the Kunstkammer’s syncretic exhibition space. The chaos of the Kunstkammer was ordered by the modern Museum, with its specialisation, hierarchies and precisely delineated boundaries between fields of knowledge. In a sense, the modern Museum, incomparably more self-aware, is merely a pale and fragmentary shadow of the essentially Borgesian utopia of the Kunstkammer as a total collection.