Ulla Aartomaa	Ulla Aartomaa Walter Ballmer Marta Granados Rosmarie Tissi Antonio Perez "Ñiko" Ikko Tanaka
People are today surrounded by the moving image as soon as they wake up. Then, what are posters needed for any more? A little more than 150 years ago it was suspected that the photography would result in the death of painting. The same kind of suspicions are aroused today when a young artist chooses the video instead of brushes and produce their work as a CD-ROM.
But the "golden age" of the poster is over now, Or isn’t? Especially commercial poster have spread from their traditional urban territories. There are commercial posters everywhere. Nobody can avoid them. Cultural posters have also started to conquer space mostly in connection with theatres, museums and concert-halls. Perhaps partly due to this, cultural posters are stylistically independent, speaking more directly to their target group.
From time to time the genres of the visual arts have had notable impacts on the trends of applied art. At present time, low and high art seem to go stylisticaly hand in hand. Only the contents and circulation channels of the work determine whether it belongs to the blod of the fine arts or applied arts.
The time of modern man is divided between an ever increasing number of different media. The poster is unlikely to be displaced by the new audiovisual equipment. When laying out extensive advertising campaigns the advertiser wants to make sure that the bombardement goes on when one leaves home. This is where the poster serves a useful purpose.
When kings die subjects traditionally wish the successor welcome by shouting: the King is dead —long live the King! The 100-year-old grand old man poster is alive and well, perhaps living its life on a smaller scale, but nevertheless with persistence. The above is proved by the growing number of poster exhibitions and competitions gathering poster freaks together all over the world. New poster books and studies are seized upon eagerly.
The poster is indisputably alive.
Text from the Fourth International Biennial of Poster in Mexico catalogue.
Ulla Aartomaa was born in Kuopio, Finland in 1949. She received a Master Degree on History of Art from the Jyväskylä University in 1977. She also studied at Alvar Aalto Museum, Museum of Central Finland, Kuopio Museum of Cultural History. She worked as a curator at the Lahti Art Museum and as an acting director at the Lahti City Museum. She has teached on the most important schools in Finland such as Lahti Technical College, Workers Institute in Lahti, Lahti Art School and Lahti Art Industrial School and the Holsinki University. She has publishe numerous articles on diferent subjects of desing on the newspaper Estelä Soumen Sanomat, Pörssilehti magazine, Lahti Poster Biennial catalogues, design magazines in Finland and abroad for Form Function, Idea, Osma and Affiche; she has also written studies on posters of Björn Landstrom and Erik Brunn; a study on graphic design of Martti Mykkänen is now under research. She participated as a lecturer on the Graphic Designers Meeting in Erfurt, Germany and on the ICSID Congress in Amsterdam. She has been member of the jury of Lahti Poster Biennial on diferent years, and in Ars Baltica in Warsaw. She also made various study trips to Poster Biennials in Warsaw, Brno, Mexico and to the poster exhibition in Echirolles, France.
Last update: 1996.