Roman Cieślewicz

zapis · slika

1. What it is — a poster for the state fashion house Moda Polska; photolithograph, 68.6 × 47 cm (MoMA 330.1961, gift of the artist). MoMA: after 1956 the regime turns toward mass-consumption goods for foreign currency; the poster is a homage to the surreal fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli (shoe-hat, lobster-hat).
2. Composition — a black plane; a woman's head in profile, turned left, cut out of a grey photograph/engraving, placed in the lower half; on the head, instead of a hat, a huge red rose taking up the top third. The eye enters the rose (the largest, brightest mass), runs down the profile, stops at the lips. Bottom left corner: a red-and-white halftone ornament as a „dress".
3. Colour — three: black background, grey head, red rose. Red is the only saturated one and so the only one carrying „fashion"; the head is deliberately colourless — the model is a carrier, not the subject.
4. Typography — in the reproduction seen there is almost no text; if a logotype exists, it is small. To verify against the original.
5. Message — three seconds: „rose as hat = elegance that's a bit mad". Five metres: a red flower on black, readable from the street. There's no fashion (no dress, no cut) — there is a sign for fashion.
6. Why exactly this way — a state house with no product range to show; the poster has to sell the idea of elegance, not a product. The collage is cheap (one photograph plus one cut-out), and the surreal gesture is legitimate because it references Schiaparelli, not the West directly.
7. What would kill it — a rose at natural scale. The disproportion is the whole work.

Principles: jedna-slika-jedna-rijec istorijski-citat-kao-gradivni-materijal boja-kao-hijerarhija-ne-ukras To verify against the image: whether the head is a photograph or an engraving; whether text exists.

zapis

1. What it is — a poster for the Warsaw staging of Luigi Dallapiccola's opera Il prigioniero (1944), Opera Warszawska; lithograph, 97.2 × 67.3 cm (MoMA 1787.2008). MoMA: a figure bound in an armoured shell, suffocating in an eruption of flame and blood — pessimism, betrayal, the entrapment of Cold War Europe.
2. Composition — a light, dirty-white background. A figure in profile, turned left, shifted right of centre, taking up ~70% of the height. The body is an engraving of armour (cut out of a 19th-century encyclopedia, tinted olive), the head bare, in a fine engraving halftone. From the neck/mouth, at the join of head and armour, a red flame — the only movement in the image. The eye enters on the red, climbs the profile, descends the ribs of the armour.
3. Colour — three: olive (armour), black (engraving), red (wound). Red is the only warm one and sits exactly where man and shell meet — colour is a diagnosis, not decoration.
4. Typography — top left „Dallapiccola" small, „więzień" in a heavy, condensed typeface (egyptienne/grotesque class — not confirmed); „Opera Warszawska" small at bottom right. The text stays at the edge, the image carries everything.
5. Message — three seconds: „a man in armour burning inside". Five metres: a black silhouette plus a red stain. The plot of the opera (Spain, the Inquisition) is not shown — what is shown is a state.
6. Why exactly this way — a ban on drawing he imposed on himself: everything is found material (engraving of armour plus photograph of head). The collage is honest about its origin; the armour is literally an old illustration, and this makes the imprisonment historical, not psychological.
7. What would kill it — the flame in more than one place. One wound, one colour.

Principles: analogija-umjesto-ilustracije boja-samo-na-rani istorijski-citat-kao-gradivni-materijal To verify against the image: whether the head is a photograph or an engraving; the exact tone of the armour.

zapis · V&A

1. What it is — poster for the drama by Juliusz Słowacki (1843) at the Teatr Dramatyczny, Warsaw; offset lithograph, 85.4 × 60.3 cm (MoMA 377.1963, gift of the author). The MoMA label carries his quote about the "street image" and a note: under socialist realism the theatre poster was allowed to be more abstract and psychological than propaganda.
2. Composition — cream background; one black silhouette — a fist clenched over the crown of a bowed head/body — descends from the middle to the bottom, with a wide, blotchy lower part like a cloak. Behind the fist, above, a magenta halo applied with spray, soft. The eye enters on the magenta (the only colour), slides to the fingers, then down the black mass. Top band: title left, author right, in one line.
3. Colour — two: black and magenta. Magenta is at once holiness (halo) and pain (at the place of the head). The soft edge of the spray against the hard edge of the silhouette — that is the entire axis of contrast: hard/soft.
4. Typography — capitals grotesque, two cuts (Ksiądz Marek heavier, Juliusz Słowacki lighter), "Teatr Dramatyczny" small. Typeface not confirmed. The text sits in a band like a newspaper headline — it does not mix with the image.
5. Message — three seconds: "a man holds his head, something burns". Five metres: black blot + pink circle. The play (the priest of Bar, messianism) is not illustrated; it is temperature — prayer or torment, the viewer chooses.
6. Why exactly this way — two colours (budget and technique), a ban on drawing (the silhouette is cut, not drawn), and censorship that tolerates abstraction in theatre.
7. What would kill it — a face in the silhouette. As soon as an expression is visible, the halo becomes illustration.

Principles: crno-bijelo-prije-boje boja-samo-na-rani jedna-osa-kontrasta To verify against the image: whether the silhouette is a photographic negative or brushwork.

Sotheby's · slika

1. What it is — poster for the first Polish release of Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), 1963; offset in colour, 84 × 58 cm (Sotheby's; another source gives 83.3 × 59, print run 8500 — to verify). Client, as a rule, CWF — to verify. No museum record found; Eye lists it as one of his two "most famous" (along with Katastrofa) and included it in the exhibition Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design.
2. Composition — white background. Three bands: above a typographic block (actors' names + HITCHCOCK across the full width), middle a skull from an anatomical engraving, frontal, with a concentric target on the forehead; below the film title and a photograph of a suit with a tie in halftone — the skull wears the suit. The eye enters the target (the only colour), falls to the teeth, reads the title. Symmetrical axis, but the target is pushed slightly above the centre of the skull — it spins.
3. Colour — black on white + three colours only in the target: blue, green, red rings. Colour is concentrated in one place and that place is vertigo. Everything else is engraving and halftone.
4. Typography — HITCHCOCK in a massive slab-capitals of the Clarendon class, the actors' names in a heavy grotesque, the film title in a condensed grotesque. Three registers of type, all "fairground", like a 19th-century circus poster — deliberate, alongside the engraving. Typefaces not confirmed.
5. Message — three seconds: "death with a target on its forehead, in a suit". Five metres: black skull + colourful target. Sotheby's calls it a "bizarre" interpretation of the film — it is not: Vertigo is a film about a man watching a dead woman, and about a spiral; Cieślewicz took the spiral (Bass's title-sequence motif) and death and fused them into one body. This is Bass's Vertigo retold as collage.
6. Why exactly this way — the Polish distributor has no photographs of the actors nor rights to the American key-art; the designer has an engraving, a process camera and three colours. Constraint produces the icon.
7. What would kill it — a photograph of Kim Novak instead of the skull. It would become an American poster, and a worse one.

Principles: istorijski-citat-kao-gradivni-materijal (engraving + fairground typography + optical target — three unrelated sources) crno-bijelo-prije-boje analogija-umjesto-ilustracije To verify against the image: the exact number of rings in the target and the colours; the technique of the lower halftone (photo or engraving).

zapis

1. What it is — poster from the state circus series (ZPR, via WAG — client to verify), lithograph, 99.1 × 68.6 cm (MoMA 352.2014, gift of the author). The CYRK series is a Polish institution: same title, dozens of authors, never a programme, always an authorial image.
2. Composition — a black field to the edges, with a rough, brush-stroked edge. Top left a white oval beam of a spotlight with the word CYRK; left of centre a tiny white figure of an acrobat in flight, diagonal; bottom right a second, smaller light oval (a second spotlight or a net). The eye travels spotlight → acrobat → lower oval: the trajectory of the leap. The figure occupies maybe 8% of the surface — the emptiness is the arena.
3. Colour — black, white, and on the acrobat three spots: yellow, green, magenta. Colour is only on the body that is flying; everything else is darkness. The cheapest possible split: one plate of black, three dots of colour.
4. Typography — CYRK in a Tuscan circus serif with ornament, inside the oval — the typeface is a costume, not information (not confirmed).
5. Message — three seconds: "someone is flying through the dark". Five metres: a white dot in black. The circus is not depicted (no tent, clown, lion) — what is depicted is the moment of the circus: fear and light.
6. Why exactly this way — the CYRK series requires each author to state their own circus; his is black. The black field is both technically cheap and conceptually accurate (the auditorium is dark).
7. What would kill it — a bigger acrobat. Once the figure exceeds 20% of the surface, the darkness becomes a background, not a space.

Principles: jedna-slika-jedna-rijec bijeli-prostor-kao-oblik (here black) ekstremna-nesrazmjera-mjerila (figure against the arena) To verify against the image: whether the edge of the black field is printed or is damage to the copy; the exact technique of the white oval (spray/halftone).

zapis

1. What it is — poster for Mickiewicz's Dziady at the Teatr Narodowy, Warsaw, 1967; lithograph, 96.8 × 67.3 cm (MoMA 160.2016, gift of Mirko Ilić). If this is Dejmek's staging (premiere 25.11.1967), it concerns the production whose ban in January 1968 triggered the March protests — to verify whether the poster is for that staging; MoMA does not state this.
2. Composition — a black field; within it a bust (head and shoulders, frontal) built from a photograph of cracked earth, mirrored on the vertical axis — the cracks meet in the middle like the seams of a face. At the centre of the chest a black hollow rimmed with a red glow. The eye enters the red (the only warm colour), climbs onto the "face" of cracks, exits onto the title top left.
3. Colour — three: black, cream (earth), red (the edge of the wound). The red is halftone or spray, a soft transition — the only soft edge in an image made entirely of sharp cracks.
4. Typography — "dziady" in lowercase, a heavy egyptienne (Rockwell class — Eye lists Rockwell among his typefaces; not confirmed for this piece); "Adam Mickiewicz" and "Teatr Narodowy" small above and below. Top left, outside the axis of symmetry — the only asymmetry in the piece.
5. Message — three seconds: "a dead man made of earth, his heart is a hole". Five metres: a light bust on black with a red stain. Dziady is a rite for the dead — the poster does not illustrate the rite, it is the dead man returning. The mirroring makes a face that belongs to no one.
6. Why exactly this way — one photograph (cracked earth), one operation (mirroring), one accent (red). Constraint: no drawing, no actor, no set. This is the beginning of the Figury symetryczne series (1971–74) four years early.
7. What would kill it — two different photographs for the left and right halves. The mirroring is what makes it inhuman.

Principles: zrcaljenje-pravi-cudoviste analogija-umjesto-ilustracije boja-samo-na-rani jedna-operacija-po-radu To verify against the image: whether the red is halftone or spray; whether there is text along the right edge.

MoMA · Pompidou

1. What it is — poster for the magazine Opus International no. 3, 1967; printer Georges Fall; photolithograph 81.9 × 54.9 cm (MoMA 1788.2008) / offset 84 × 57 cm (Pompidou AM 2009-1-148, signature "R. Cieslewicz 67"); 1968. also as a numbered screenprint edition (Georges Fall Éditeur). MAD: Korda's 1960 photograph reduced to a line drawing; "the absent gaze is symbolically exchanged with the name of the revolutionary" (Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle); the dead guerrilla turned into a Christ-like icon.
2. Composition — red field; black mass of hair and beard as a frame; inside an orange face as a flat plane with no tone, facial lines in black; where the eyes should be, »CHE« / SI in two lines. Magenta star on the beret, magenta shoulder lower left. Frontal, symmetrical, face fills ~60% of the width. The eye enters the word (darkest on the lightest), then the star, then the beard.
3. Colour — four flats: red, black, orange, magenta. No tone, no screen — everything is cut. Red/orange/magenta are adjacent on the colour wheel, so they vibrate at the edge (an op-art effect MAD mentions as one of his tools); black settles them down.
4. Typography — heavy, condensed egyptienne/grotesque with angled guillemets »« (class Berthold Block — Eye lists it as his favourite typeface, Fonts In Use confirms it only on the 1993 poster; not confirmed for this work). The word is physically standing in for the eyes, the same width as the gaze.
5. Message — three seconds: "Che, yes". Five metres: face + word, legible even without eyes — precisely for that reason. The poster says the name has replaced the man; that is affirmation and critique at once, and that is what sets it apart from Fitzpatrick's Che from the same year.
6. Why exactly this way — an art magazine in Paris in 1967, a year before May; Korda's is the one image everyone knows. The only intervention that adds instead of decorating is subtraction — of the gaze.
7. What would kill it — the eyes. Bring the eyes back, you get a T-shirt.

Principles: tekst-na-mjestu-pogleda jedna-slika-jedna-rijec ravna-boja-na-daljinu crno-bijelo-prije-boje (the silhouette holds even without colour) To verify against the image: the exact shade of orange; whether there is more text along the edge (Opus International).

slika

1. What it is — cover of the monthly Ty i ja ("Luty" = February; issue number and year 1968 per the cover masthead), offset; magazine format — to verify. Cieślewicz was art director there 1959–62; a 1968 cover means he was still working for them from Paris — circumstance to verify. No museum record.
2. Composition — white ground; a woman's leg, from knee to thigh, in coarsely enlarged halftone (dot ~1 cm at this scale), diagonally across the whole page; on the knee, as on a slope, a tiny skier in black silhouette. Above, "ty i ja" in enormous lowercase, to its left the table of contents in a boxed table. Lower left a coloured patch (pink/orange). The eye enters the title, slides down the leg with the skier — the poster is a ski slope.
3. Colour — black and white + one coloured patch in the corner, like a leftover of the "real" cover; colour here is a joke at fashion's expense, not hierarchy.
4. Typography — "ty i ja" in heavy grotesque lowercase, full page width, letters spaced out (not confirmed); table of contents in tiny serif — a 1:30 contrast.
5. Message — three seconds: "skier on a knee". Five metres: black diagonal made of dots + title. Up close the leg dissolves into dots and you see the print, not skin — the enlarged halftone is the argument: you're looking at the medium, not the woman.
6. Why exactly this way — a process camera and one photograph; the skier is cut from another. The scale mismatch is Matter's trick (Herbert Matter, Swiss tourism posters of the 1930s), but Matter sells the mountain, while Cieślewicz sells a magazine about couples and simultaneously shows that the image of the woman is made of dots.
7. What would kill it — a fine screen. Once the dot disappears, all that's left is the leg and the skier — a joke, without a thesis.

Principles: citljivost-na-granici ekstremna-nesrazmjera-mjerila jeftina-tehnika-kao-jezik jedna-operacija-po-radu (enlarge) To verify against the image: the issue number and year on the cover; whether the halftone is photographic or hand-augmented (Eye: with a marker).

zapis

1. What it is — advertising poster for the photo magazine Zoom (publisher Georges Fall), 1971; screenprint mounted on card, 101 × 71.2 cm (Pompidou AM 2009-1-156, signature "R. Cieslewicz 71"). MAD: a portrait surgically cut and reassembled into a cyclops; Cieślewicz defines the designer as a "guide of the retina" against image saturation. Wlassikoff: the point where he crosses from advertising into authored work.
2. Composition — black and white, white frame; the bust of a man in a suit, frontal, head mirrored so that the two profiles meet in one eye in the centre of the forehead; below the eye, nose and mouth doubled into a symmetrical seam. All in a coarse screen. Text below, centred, small, three lines. The eye enters the eye — and stays there; nothing else in the image has any claim on the gaze.
3. Colour — none. Black and white in halftone; grey does not exist as a tone but as dot density. For a poster against "eye pollution" colour itself would be pollution.
4. Typography — book serif, small, centred, three lines: "Zoom / contre la pollution / de l'oeil" (not confirmed). The text is a caption under the image, like in an anatomical atlas — cold.
5. Message — three seconds: "a man with one eye is watching you". Five metres: black symmetrical mass + white eye dot. The thesis is literal: one eye = reduction, against too many images. The poster is an advert speaking against advertising and does so without irony of form.
6. Why exactly this way — one photograph, one operation (mirroring around the axis through the eye), one technique (halftone). Screenprint on card = an exhibition object, not a street poster; Fall also issued it as an edition.
7. What would kill it — a fine tone instead of a screen. The cyclops would become horror; the halftone keeps it in the category of a printed image, hence an argument.

Principles: zrcaljenje-pravi-cudoviste citljivost-na-granici jedna-operacija-po-radu jeftina-tehnika-kao-jezik To verify against the image: whether the eye is mirrored or one is original; the width of the white frame.