Extreme Canvas: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana

by Wolfe, Ernie

• ISBN13: 9780966427219
• ISBN10: 0966427211
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-03-01
• Publisher: Distributed Art Pub Inc

Summary

In the 1980s a group of entrepreneurs in Ghana created small-scale, mobile film-distribution empires, hitting the road with videocassettes, television monitors, portable gas-powered generators and rolled-up, hand-painted, artist-signed canvas posters. This new medium created the first opportunity for some of the best young painters in Ghana to express themselves on a public scale. In the frequent absence of an original image upon which to base the work they had been commissioned to produce, the artists inevitably created cinematic paintings that were largely interpretive and imagination-driven. In the book's four major essays, author Ernie Wolfe III recounts the rise and fall of the mobile cinema tradition, while noted African art scholar Roy Sieber follows two-dimensional art in Africa from rock paintings in the Sahara to contemporary manuals, wall paintings, and barber board paintings as well as the canvas movie posters themselves; Paul Hayes Tucker compares the phenomenon to 19th century European utility-based painting; and poet and art critic John Yau contr

Table of Contents

Foreword	6	(8)
Joe Coleman
Before They Called It Painting	8	(8)
Roy Sieber
Adventures In African Cinema 1975--1998	16	(18)
Ernie Wolfe III
Of Musclemen, Machine Guns and Avengers	34	(4)
Paul Hayes Tucker
Collision Course	38	(8)
John Yau
Other Considerations	46	(4)
Deirdre Evans-Pritchard
Science Fiction and Fantasy, introduction	50	(34)
LeVar Burton
Action and Adventure, introduction	84	(36)
Walter Hill
War and Urban Commandos, introduction	120	(44)
John Milius
Horror, introduction	164	(52)
Clive Barker
Comedy and Drama, introduction	216	(30)
Anjelica Huston
Martial Arts, introduction	246	(36)
Gus Van Sant
Artists' Statements	282	(14)
Contributors	296	(2)
Acknowledgements	298	(2)
Index	300