Poster for the Photography Department One in a series of eleven two sided posters for Cranbrook Academy of Art. Commissioned by Director Reed Kroloff. |
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Writer Rick Poynor discuss this work in relationship to surrealism...
"The work of contemporary designers such as M/M and Elliott Earls (at top), both featured in “Uncanny,” has the same irreducible capacity to disturb. Measured against the smooth, palatable conventions of contemporary graphic design, such imagery can look perverse, obscure, and willfully dysfunctional. Earls’s magnificent recalcitrance has always appealed to me, but graphic designers who are prepared to accept extreme forms of expression in art or film often reject this in the graphic arena. When placed in the surrealist tradition, Earls’s bizarre fantasies might still seem irrational by any objective measure, yet they are fully at home there and make their own peculiar kind of sense.
Good taste attempts to curb and control, and surrealism has always resisted it. If we want to understand who we are, what we are made of, and what we desire, then we have to be prepared to pry open the gates. What bursts out can often look excessive—from Starowieyski’s skull people to Ed Fella’s replicating letterforms—but something significant is always revealed. It was surprising, even for me, gathering together this work from the last 80 years, to realize how persistent these visual themes have been. “Uncanny” presents many images of strange, monstrous, and even demonic figures and forms. It also contains a bountiful crop of curiosities, marvels, and wonders. This poorly tended and partly concealed graphic tradition has greatly enriched visual communication. We should cultivate its wild, orchidaceous blooms."Rick Poynor
The complex Bonds Between Design and Surrealism.
Print Magazine, August 2010.
Detail #1 |
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Detail #2 |
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© 2008. All illustration, typography, photography, design and rendering by Elliott Earls. All Rights Reserved.
