The Theater Posters of James McMullanOn buses, billboards, and train platforms, in newspapers and magazines, a poster's swift promise in glorious color or powerful dark tones offers a vivid impression of what awaits a theatergoer, and provides the lasting mental image of a play long after its closing night. No one creates such images with more invention, honesty, and beauty--sometimes disturbingly, but always memorably--than James McMullan. "The Theater Posters of James McMullan" is an illuminating collection of 36 posters from 1976 to the present (from "Arcadia" and "Carousel" to "Six Degrees of Separation" ), almost all of them for New York's Lincoln Center Theater, by this artist for whom "the body itself becomes a quickly understood gesture like the movement of a mime or a dance." The ragman hanging off the lamppost with his flaming match in "Road," the French-postcard wink of the "Anything Goes" woman, Eros aiming his arrow in "Four Baboons Admiring the Sun" . . . full-page reproductions of McMullan's posters accompany his stories of their geneses. Reference photographs, sketches, and alternate versions illustrate his search for the perfect visual metaphor. Most of all, the personalities and dramas of the theater people who surrounded each poster's birth--from Wole Soyinka and John Guare to Liv Ullmann, Patti LuPone, and Mike Nichols--fill this gift book of choice for all theater and art lovers. |
Contents
Comedians 1976 | 1 |
Measure for Measure February 3 1989 | 32 |
Two Shakespearean Actors December 17 1991 | 46 |
Copyright | |
4 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Abe Lincoln American Daughter André Bishop Arcadia artist asked became Bernard Gersten Bernie and André Blue Leaves bus poster Carlin Carousel Cherry Jones Comedians Daniel Sullivan DIRECTED BY DANIEL Directed by Gerald director drawing Ed Lauter face Fair Country feel felt figure final art Four Baboons Adoring funny gave Gerald Gutierrez gesture gouache Greg Mosher Gregory Mosher head House of Blue idea imagined Jack O'Brien James McMullan Jerry Zaks Jim Russek John Guare Jon Robin Baitz Josef Sommer knew Lauter Lincoln Center Theater look Mike Nichols musical painting pencil sketch pencil study photographs photos I took piece of art play playwright portrait pose poster for Lincoln producers Richard Eyre Richard Nelson role Sam Waterston scene script shadow Shakespearean Actors Six Degrees sketch I showed star Stoppard story suggest texture Theater Posters thought Tom Stoppard visual watercolor Waterston Wendy Wasserstein Wole Soyinka young