MY POSTER PAST :: part 2

A healthy obsession can sometimes lead to a practical outcome; someone with a strong interest in drawing, sports, or cars may go on to become successful artists, athletes, or auto mechanics, respectively. Me, I had a waking/sleeping/eating preoccupation with The Beatles between '95 and '98, and it resulted in an extravagant solution to one of my very-adolescent problems.
My sister moved out in 1990, and I inherited her slightly larger bedroom - complete with the moldy, late 60s/early 70s fuchsia/gold wallpaper pattern that came with the house. For years I tried to divert my attention away from this noisy distraction while my lousy, good-for-nothing parents wouldn't put in for a total renovation. Meanwhile, all my wall art was offset by this drab parade of pink puke, and no amount of 24x36s could geometrically cover every angle and corner.

Cut to 1995 when The Beatles Anthology premiers on ABC and provokes a lifelong love affair with The Fab Four - as well as sparking a new wave of merchandise (t-shirts, books, magazines, posters) to be very readily available.
And so, a robust induction into Beatlemania started as this:

...and within a year, mutated into this:

...as well as this, this, this, and this:

Of course, whenever my interests predictably deviated, I was already obsessively compulsively locked into this singular pop culture niche; I'd painted myself into a corner until I moved out several years later. Still, though: commitment accomplished, wallpaper concealed.

There's not much to say about most of the posters floating around in this chaos - rarely were the parts as great as the sum. But here are three of varying shades of importance.

- Paul

BEATLES' 45rpm

Notable not because of the poster art (which is ugly) but because it was my first official Beatles poster - found under the tree on Xmas '95.
Depicting each sleeve for the Italian 45s, it continually got pushed to the back of the line until I finally cut it up - extracting all the little squares and using them to fill in the rest of the holes in Albert Hall.

Signature poster

Printed on a much heavier paper stock than other posters, and three times as expensive, I was convinced (and psyched) that it was the fanciest piece of contemporary decor I could get my hands on. Every wall it migrated to it popped as a stark centerpiece.
It depicted each of the Four's autographs in gold (which I learned to forge with great precision) and a black and white photo circa my favorite era: 1968/"The White Album."

"The White Album" poster

The Holy Grail.
Not sold in stores (technically), it was not easy to come by in a time when the vinyl industry was dead and eBay wasn't even a word.
I'd read about it in books and seen compromised portions of it, but nothing at that time had been so life-changing as when I spotted it across a crowded, cluttered outdoor flea market in Hollis, New Hampshire in June of 1997, hanging off the side of a parked van, illuminated in the summer sun.
The poster - created by Richard Hamilton and included inside the sleeve of the original release of The Beatles - has multifaceted importance to me. In addition to being a physical (and accurate) depiction of my all-time favorite album by any band, the composition itself is easily my favorite piece of collage art, which places it close to the top of my list of greatest achievements in all visual art - in any medium.
I've amassed three extra copies over the years - in case of emergency.