I did this poster during the first lesson based on what came to me straight away when I read the rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb straight away. I loved trashy art and exploitation movie posters so I decided to use those ideas and look for this assignment.

Professor Ina also told me to refer to Hannah Hoch since my composition reminded her of Hoch’s work. Strange enough or maybe not, Hoch’s work looks very familiar…I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it somewhere before during my regular internet surfing journeys for the weird…

Untitled Collage (1930)

While I really liked Hoch’s work, I wanted to go for something a lot more graphic and messier. While Hoch’s work is handmade, Hoch’s work had a strong “photoshopped” feel that was not very in line with the requirements for the assignment so I had to think of how I could incorporate her style but still have that “hand-printed” look. Thus, I referred to exploitation movie posters which were very messy and had a strong “hand-printed” (not sure if this is the correct term but its the idea of it have a traditionally printed look) look. Exploitation ones in particular since their main was to shock and be the extreme of everything wrong so the posters were naturally very graphic and in-your-face. Correct me if I’m wrong cause I’m not the most well versed person when it comes to movie posters and such but whatever I reference is honest and true from heart.

These were not the exact references I referred to since I referred to whatever I remembered from all the posters I looked at in the past and what stood out to me. I tend to reference gritty horror ones since they are a lot more graphic and I like that. The posters managed to make photographs have a “painted”/”inked”/”hand-printed” feel and I like how direct they are about their subject matter that it just pops right at you. I was also keeping in mind my love for erotic-grotesque artist Suehiro Maruo’s works.

The above is pretty much sums up my influences and research for the look of my compositions as for the idea…I would say it just came to me and I just gradually built on it based on whatever that came into my mind…maybe due to being into a lot of these things. I do have a quite a few books (some academic) on erotic matter such as the era of Weimar Berlin, Japanese ero-guro artists, a french book on shock collage…I like surfing the deepest recesses of the internet when I’m alone at night…hmm… Whether or not that says something about me…hmmm…okay that’s enough.