WWTW interview: Director Merle Becker – ‘American Artifact’

If documentary filmmaker Merle Becker has her way, rock poster artists will start getting some of the fame typically afforded the musicians themselves.

“American Artifact: The Rise of American Rock Poster Art” tells the fascinating story of the genre’s roots – and its uncompromising vision.

WWTW caught up with Merle to ask her a few questions regarding her smart, impassioned documentary

WWTW: Were you a fan of rock poster art before beginning your documentary – which ones do you remember the most fondly?

MB: I really wasn’t aware of the modern rock poster scene until I came across “The Art of Modern Rock” book, around 2004. I was born in the ’70s, and (obviously) missed the Fillmore era, and until I came across that book, I had no idea people were still even doing rock posters.

I will say though, I’ve always been really interested in music imagery, music videos, album covers, etc. For example, my first job out of college was on the MTV show, “Beavis & Butt-Head,” and a large part of my job was picking out the music videos that appeared on the show. So, every day, all day, I had to go through the MTV library and watch obscure or funny music videos that could be used on the show. I LOVED that job. I think anyone else would have slit their wrists after a few days of watching one bad music video after another, but, I loved it.

So, it was a bit of a natural thing for me to be really into rock posters when I came across that book.

WWTW: What qualities do these rock poster artists have in common?

At the risk of generalizing, I will say that most of the artists that I met are also really into music. Many of them were in a band at one time, and many did flyers for their local bands while they were growing up. Most of the artists I met are also “DIY-ers”, and to most of them, it’s more important to be doing something they love and making less (or little) money, than it is to be making a lot of money working at a job they are miserable at.

When I started the film, I was coming from a somewhat comfortable corporate television editing job, going to an indie film with little or no funding, and by the end, I was more on the “starving artist” side of the spectrum. By the film’s completion, I had many things in common with the artists that are in the movie.

WWTW: What aspect of rock poster art is most misunderstood … and do you think art critics will eventually embrace the genre?

MB: I think the most common misconception about rock art, and “lowbrow art” is that it’s really not “important,” or worthy of preserving in art museums, etc. When actually it is one of the purest forms of folk art that we have in America today. If you take a look back through history, every major music movement has been accompanied by visual art: the Baroque period, the Classical period, and so on. They each had a style of painting or sculpture that accompanied the music.

We are currently in “the era of rock and roll”. That’s the music of our era, and, this is the art that is accompanying it. These posters are very “important”; they are artifacts of our generation.

Some day, they will help future generations to tell how we lived, what we wore, what we valued in our society, and so on. They should be preserved – And, this is precisely why I chose to document them and their history!

On the same subject, if you were to ask any of the contemporary rock poster artists if it was important to them to be accepted by the “art critic” world, most would say “no.”

The whole nature of doing rock posters is very underground and counter-culture, and there’s not a real desire to be “accepted” or understood by the mainstream. The most important thing for most of the artists in the film is that the band likes their work, and that the artist’s fans continue to support their career.

WWTW: Were there cases in which the musicians featured on the rock posters objected to their content or in any way disagreed with the visual approach taken in them?

MB: In an overwhelming majority of the cases, the musicians are extremely appreciative, and psyched to have this amazing artwork associated with their music.

However, I can recall one story, told to me by a (fantastic) artist, Scrojo, about a poster he did for a to-remain-unnamed female singer, who didn’t like the way her portrait on the poster turned out (which, to me, is hard to believe because Scrojo does some of the most amazing/flattering portraits one could imagine. If we all looked like a Scrojo drawing, it’d be a pretty hot population).

Anyhow, she threatened to walk out the night of the show. Scrojo said he ended up scrapping the design and doing a different one for her (that apparently looked nothing like her). And, the show went on.

WWTW: Can you talk about your marketing efforts for the film … have you been able to leverage music sources/outlets to spread the word?

MB: Marketing has been very grassroots, and by no means has there been a big budget for any of this. Much of it has been press releases, word of mouth, and of course, with every article that comes out, the buzz about the movie grows.

Many of the poster artists have been extremely supportive of the project, and we are fortunate enough to have some of the artists from the film working on movie posters for the June 20th premiere. Artists like Dennis Loren, Chuck Sperry, Leia Bell, Hatch Show Print, and Paul Imagine have already done some amazing posters for the movie, which have all been instrumental in spreading the word online.

And we have ones on the way from legendary artists like Stanley Mouse, and contemporaries like Lindsey Kuhn, Justin Hampton, Scrojo, and a few more (whose names I’ll keep as a surprise), which will also help to spread the word.

Many of them are posted on the website ( http://www.americanartifactmovie.com ), and we’ll continue to put them up as they come out.

WWTW: Where do you see rock poster art heading in the 21st century – and which style motifs will we be seeing in the near future?

MB: I think the movement will keep growing exponentially. This medium has provided an outlet for a whole new generation of illustrators, and it keeps growing every day. At some point, it will die down for a while, like it did in the 70s. It’s all cyclical.

Some of the artists doing it now will move on to other things like vinyl toy design (many of them have already: Frank Kozik, Tara McPherson, and Jermaine Rogers all have really great toy lines).

But as far as posters go, if you go on to GigPosters.com on any given day, you’ll get an idea of what lies ahead. Every day, a poster pops up on there that is completely different from anything that’s been done before – That’s what keeps it exciting. And, hopefully, the movie will be able to give the world just a taste of what’s to come!

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