“Documentalism” of the “Long 1980s” Poster as a Visual Historical Source: “Artistic” and “Non‑Artistic” Forms

Abstract

The article studies posters of the late 1980s – early 1990s (the so‑called period of the “long 1980s”) as a visual historical source. In analyzing the problem, the author points out that the illustrative model dominates among the visual representation models of the history at that time. In the historical and cultural focus, it is a parallel story that has no narrative tasks of its own and acts as a visual “animator” of the text. Its characteristic features are low representativeness and “closeness” of visual ideas. As a consequence, the text replaces the meaning and significance of the poster’s illustrative material. The poster becomes a starting point for creating parallel text that does not consider its artistic basis and principles. Pseudo‑text provokes the artificiality of the visual in relation to the text. During this period, the attitude towards the poster as a “silent” source is established. Historians are practically not interested in the artistic nature of the poster, since it does not become an object of analysis. This method is generally common in the traditional historiography of the second half of the twentieth century. The facts established on the basis of a documentary “trace” are interpreted as self‑sufficient (that is they do not require an artistic imperative). Such practice downgrades the documentary status of visual historical sources within the framework of historical analysis. The author is considering some new models for the analysis of the visual historical source that are oriented towards the historiographical paradigm of poster research. The present study analyzes the poster as a source of interpretation of events. Thus, the meaning of a visual document has several levels: 1) the level of fact (it indicates the existence of a certain segment of reality); 2) the level of context (it describes reality through facts, events and phenomena); 3) the level of interpretation (it gives an assessment to the events and expresses a certain attitude towards them).