MY POSTER PAST :: part 9

Good morning, class. Today we will be discussing O.S.P. Publishing, Inc. - the company responsible for most of the visual components of my childhood and yours. 

From what I know (which is severely limited), O.S.P. was in business from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, and they manufactured "paper goods and printed material" - most specifically "posters, calendars, children's novelty identification cards (which you can read about here) and bookmarks." Today, I'm just here about the posters, as O.S.P. (One Stop Posters) were one of the leading brand names in Commercial Posters (which just means posters that are manufactured and distributed for decorative purposes, which is largely the only kind I've discussed in this series). Sometimes they were sold ready for display in a cheap gold frame, under plexiglass (you could typically win these at a carnival) but the kind I knew and loved best came tightly rolled in a cellophane wrapper and sold in the same department store where I got my toys and clothes. That and the record stores were this company's stamping grounds and as far as I know they did well. 

Outside of the rockstars and pinups and athletes, they sold movie posters - but it went beyond that; they didn't just release the standard theatrical one-sheet, they turned it into a collector's game, utilizing publicity stills to offer a whole environment of Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Jurassic Park, Dracula, Terminator 2, and all that which ensconced my bedroom in millennial nostalgia to the point of claustrophobia. Even when I briefly switched over to the bikini babes when I was 10/11 my surroundings became a shrine of O.S.P. T&A. 

They also had the Disney license. 

If you had or saw any Disney related wall art in stores or in homes around this time then it was likely printed by O.S.P. From the cradle to the dorm this company decorated our world at a time when clearly we wanted decoration. I can't be too sure as to whether or not this is just one of those instances where I aged out and I'm no longer in the loop but I feel like commercial posters are no longer a thing for common folk. O.S.P. Publishing and the store in the mall where I bought most of my posters in the 1990s both went out of business within a couple of years of each other, right at the beginning of the new century. But that's another conundrum: I don't usually see posters for sale in stores anymore, and that's largely because I don't see stores anymore. 

When I was a kid it was common for grownups to have "a coupla paintings from Sears" around the house - now there's no more Sears and the commercial art aesthetic is either banal aphorisms painted onto wood, or, nothing. Nowadays, I suppose, if you want to view a Flemish landscape (or a picture of Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman) you can just look at it on the device in your hand as you sit on the couch in your barren lifeless dwelling. But that harkens back to the old David Lynch adage: I don't think you're really seeing or experiencing art through these means, not to mention a general deprivation of a stimulating environment. It's the same situation as physical media (of all kinds) - people don't want stuff anymore, and I could be an idealist and say that perhaps we've all become more enlightened as we no longer place as much value on material possessions... But I know that's not true and maybe this isn't the right thread for exploring that, but I will say that in the time in which we find ourselves when people are very protective and proud of their own identities one would think they'd wanna celebrate and advertise that - especially with glossy oversized photos of Michael Jordan and Garfield. 

- Paul