| dc.description.abstract | Abstract
The theme of my thesis is to analyze the style of Chen Zi-fu’s film posters. These
posters, dated back from 1950s to 1970s, during which the lost Taiwanese films and
the glorious days of mandarin martial art movies were thriving, represent the traces of
the golden era of Taiwan film history. As a folk art with unrestrained vitality, these
posters are worthy of rediscovering and reevaluating. Base on the great amount of
film history materials, this thesis attempts to discover the pattern of visual strategy
and meanings of Chen Zi-Fu’s film posters; furthermore, it simultaneously reflects the
changing phenomena of film history, design history and popular culture of Taiwan at
that time.
The first chapter outlines the historical condition of Chen Zi-Fu’s movie posters. Not
only the development of commercial design is focused, but also the discussion of the
essence of movie poster is emphasized. The second chapter analyses the form of Chen
Zi-Fu’s posters. The Genre theory of film criticisms is primarily adopted to
differentiate various kinds of these posters. The following chapter examines the
composition elements of Chen Zi-Fu’s movie posters. In particular, foreign posters
(especially Japanese movie posters) are the important source for Chen Zi-Fu to take
reference. By comparing his works with foreign posters, three visual strategies are
discovered: imitation, replacement and collage. For Chen Zi-fu, his skills in collage
come to the phase of maturity in 1960s, which leads his poster works to mature stage.
His maturity in painting posters, expressed by the powerful movements through the
wild and strong brushstroke, was explicitly shown in mandarin martial art movies
posters.
As a product of popular culture, Chen’s film posters have its roots stem from the
fruitful environment of Taiwan culture after WWⅡ. I apply historical facts of film
industry to seek for the traces of the development of Chen’s styles from imitation,
replacement to the collage. By his learning process, one could readily meet his
insistence on hand-painted way to make posters and his experiment in the academic
paintings. With self-awareness, Chen develops his works to make a transition from
commercial posters to work of art. Not only the spirits of films are faithfully
represented, but his personal creativities are fully expressed. | en_US |