5 Posters for your bedroom wall
Arianna Sorba turns your house into a home with posters that make you look cool, even if you aren't
1. Chinese Girl
Now one of the most popular art prints of all time, the original Chinese Girl recently sold for almost £1 million in a London auction. It was painted in 1950 by Russian artist Vladimir Tretchikoff after he spotted the model forthe painting in a laundrette.
The quirky contrast between the girl’s blue skin, red lips and gold collar, combined with that fabulous hair, mean the painting has come to embody the 1950s kitsch aesthetic. In fact it’s so iconic that if you look carefully you can find it in the background throughout popular culture, from Father Ted to Monty Python to a David Bowie music video.
2. Tennis Girl
Popular for perhaps a slightly different reason, Tennis Girl started life as a calendar published for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. But it soon went the 1970s equivalent of viral, and sold over 2 million copies across the world.
It’s not just the impeccable timing of this photograph that makes it so successful. It’s very intelligently composed, with the afternoon sun beautifully framing the girl in a halo of light, cutting her figure dramatically against the soft greenery of the background. There are, after all, plenty of posters going around that have a bum in them. Not all of them have stood the test of time quite like this one.
3. Lord Kitchener Wants You
Lord Kitchener, or to give him his full name, Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener the 1st Earl Kitchener, was the British Secretary of State for War during World War One. And he wanted you.
And with that moustache, who could dare say no? The image, originally gracing the cover of the influential London Opinion magazine, became one of the most iconic posters of all time when it was used extensively - and successfully - to recruit millions of volunteers to ‘Kitchener’s Army’. The boldness and simplicity of the image, with that terrifying pointing finger, have since spawned countless imitations.
4. Campbell’s Soup Can
Andy Warhol produced his set of 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans prints in 1962, at the very birth of the Pop Art movement. Displayed together, the 32 images are identical save for the flavour– but it is apparently widely known that his favourite was tomato.
The mechanised printing method used for production and the banal subject matter meant many contemporary critics said that it wasn’t even art, let alone good art. But, 50 years later, people are still talking about the clean lines, striking imagery and cultural symbolism of Warhol’s work. So he must have done something right. (Can you spot another version of Campbell’s Soup Can on this page? If so, you win five points and an air of smugness. -Ed.)
5. Nighthawks
Painted in New York in 1942, Nighthawks is a real beauty of an Edward Hopper painting, and easily one of his most famous pieces of work.
The contrast between the murky gloom of the street and the harsh light inside makes the picture ooze a kind of mysterious, melancholy atmosphere. Eerie shadows are cast onto the pavement by the same light that also illuminates the lonely figures inside the diner. There’s a sense of isolation in the picture, as all three guests seem to be lost in their own thoughts, but there’s also a sense of quiet dignity in their stillness.
And the worst poster for your bedroom wall? KEEP CALM AND [insert something stupid here]. Just no.
