School of Visual Arts faculty exhibition 1979

Editor: This is a poster from 1979, by Lanny Sommese, advertising the School of Visual Arts faculty exhibition. It's mostly black and white, but there’s this splash of bright pink. It's such a striking composition – a pair of eyes, intensely cropped. What do you see when you look at this piece? Curator: Formally, the halftoning technique, common in printing, creates a unique visual texture, a field of dots that shapes the tonality and perceived depth. Note how this texture interacts with the hard edges of the composition and the organic forms of the eyes themselves. It asks, doesn’t it, how representation occurs on a printed surface? Editor: Absolutely! The way the pink disrupts the otherwise monochromatic palette is fascinating. It’s almost violent. Curator: Precisely. This aggressive pink not only captures immediate attention, it forces us to examine the relationships between figure and ground, surface and depth. Do you notice how the artist has used the limited colour palette to enhance certain aspects of the image? Editor: I do. The pink seems very intentional, almost like an aggressive mark on the eye itself. It reminds me of censorship, or perhaps a kind of violent abstraction. I hadn't thought of it that way. Curator: And doesn't that limited palette also serve a functional purpose, controlling printing costs while maximising visual impact? Form, function, and visual language are inextricably linked. Editor: This gives me so much to think about, especially regarding colour, texture and composition, thank you! Curator: It’s been a pleasure. Hopefully this deepened your understanding of how closely considering visual and material elements help decipher the possible message that is being conveyed.