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Baptized by Beefcake: The Golden Age of Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana

October 19, 2019 @ 10:30 am - 12:30 pm

Saturday, October 19, 10:30 a.m.
Poster House Museum, 119 W 23rd St.
FREE to attend, includes donuts, bagels, coffee/tea

Before the advent of digital printing, self-taught Ghanaian artists merged art, cinema, and practical necessity in the creation of hand-painted movie posters. These posters, uniquely painted on repurposed flour sack cloth and ultimately replaced by digital reproduction, may have never been known to the larger public were it not for the efforts of Ernie Wolfe III, Williams ’72, a dealer in African art and Los Angeles gallery owner. They represent the noble attempt by the best and brightest Ghanaian sign painters of a generation to resist the inevitable onslaught of technology and globalization that would eventually put them out of business by the year 2000. “Crowd Pullers”, as they were affectionately known in Ghana, introduced the Ghanaian public to World Cinema, and thereby, to the world at large.

Guests will enjoy a guided tour of the gallery by Ernie himself, whose decades of fieldwork and scholarship resulted in this exhibition of approximately 60 posters at the new Poster House Museum. It opens October 17 and ends on January 5, 2020.

Details

Date:
October 19, 2019
Time:
10:30 am - 12:30 pm