Tamarind Art in New York launched a new exhibition just yesterday, called Bollywood Posters - Then and Now. The show is timed to coincide with the India Now series of films at the Museum of Modern Art. The posters in this show are originals, dating from the 1960s through the 80s. Person
ally, my fondest memories of movie posters in India involve watching cows lick the glue off the back of them, as they curled off some decrepit wall, but I have no reason to believe these particular posters possess such lowly provenance.
According to the press release for this show: "The poster for the first Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra (D.G. Phalke, 1913) was a simple picture-less print. The poster of the film Kalyan Khajina (Baburao Painter, 1924) is perhaps one of the earliest posters with images to have survived. These posters were usually hand painted on canvas and then used as the design source for printing on paper. Initially overlooked as an art form because of its direct relationship to commercial networks of publicity, today the gradual disappearance of traditional posters from the streets and public places where it has traditionally found its home has made it a collectible."
We asked Deepanjana Klein, the Director of Tamarind Art, a few questions about this genre.
SAJAforum: Tell us about the market for Bollywood posters - is it growing?
The market for vintage Bollywood posters is definitely growing as more and more collectors are getting interested in them in the last 5-7 years. There is a developing awareness among collectors and art lovers that the Bollywood posters as we used to know them and take for granted are gradually vanishing with the development of technology. It should be noted these posters had rarely been viewed as an art form because of its direct relation to publicity and advertising. However, these posters are very important aspects of the Indian culture and unless conserved and aggressively preserved they would soon be lost.
Who buys these posters? Are they almost all Indians or is there a crossover appeal?
The buyers for these posters are varied and so are the intentions. For a Westerner these posters are a direct reflection of the bold, colorful and “on your face” visual sensation one is bombarded with in and around the cosmopolitan built environment in India. However, Indian private collectors and museums by far form the largest group of people who are collecting these posters more from the perspective of preserving and conserving a very important aspect of Indian cultural history.
What are the most valuable posters?
Value in any market is created by demand versus availability; it is true in the case of these posters as well. These posters used to initially be painted first on canvas and then these canvases were used as a visual reference for the mass-produced version of it in paper. These canvas layouts are very hard to come by and have become coveted items among museums as well as private collectors alike.
The earliest
posters from the 1930s through the 60s are the most sought after
posters. And then of course major box office hits from various genre of
Bollywood films ranging from the historical, the romantic to the
action-packed thriller are also major collectibles in contemporary
India. Collectors are paying over thousands of dollars for a
hand-painted poster of Mother India and other classic Bollywood films.
One designed by D. R. Bhosle for the popular 1965 Hindi film Guide,
fetched nearly $2,000.
What can you tell us about the evolution of the design itself for these
posters?
In the earliest manifestations of these posters one sees the juxtaposition of the visual context of the film along with text that highlighted the main actors and actresses and the film directors and producers. As the popularity of the actors became larger than life there was no need to mention their names in the posters and only the images were enough. Three languages of text soon gave way to two – Hindi and English. The same film had different posters designed for varied clients ranging from the cosmopolitan to the village – it depended on the cultural appeal it made on the target viewer it was addressing.
What were the challenges of curating this exhibition?
The biggest challenge in curating this exhibition was the selection of the posters that would do justice to tracing the evolution of the development of these posters as a form of art, cultural icons and also trace how with technology played a role in the overall presentation of these posters.
Conservation of these posters is always a challenge since many of the earliest posters are so brittle and easily crumble into dust. Extra efforts have been made to preserve the posters and make the collectors aware of the importance of conservation.
