Details
The image
Large abstract forms in blunt colour, arranged so the sheet reads across a lobby rather than at arm’s length. There is no photograph and no portrait, the announcement itself is the subject. The composition is poster-flat: shapes first, information second.
Where it comes from
The Next Wave Festival opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1983 as a home for work that fitted no existing category. Its first poster came from Roy Lichtenstein and the choice set a pattern: the festival kept commissioning artists rather than illustrators, so each season’s poster became a piece of art in its own right. That habit shaped arts marketing for the following decade.
On the wall
It needs a wall that can take one strong block of colour: a hallway, a studio, the end of a corridor. Because the image is abstract, it works beside furniture in almost any style but it looks best with plenty of space around it. In a group, it acts as the loudest voice, the piece others are arranged to support.
In company
Pairs well with photography and with plain, heavy furniture, because the image is abstract enough to sit beside almost anything. In a group it should be given space rather than company: two smaller prints at a distance read better than three crowded together and the colour needs a metre of wall to work. The Music collection keeps the same economy of means.
