Janis Joplin/Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Artist
Designer Unknown
Printer
Globe Poster Baltimore
Date1995
Dimensions32 3/4 x 22 in. (83.2 x 55.9 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Bob Cicero
Object numberPH.749
DescriptionThis poster is in the classic style of the celebrated Globe Poster Printing Corporation of Baltimore, founded in 1929 primarily as a printer of film posters; during the 1960s it became well-known for its posters for top R&B and rock acts like James Brown, Otis Reading, Marvin Gaye, and the Beach Boys. In the mid-1950s, Harry Knorr, a designer who worked for the firm for 50 years, established this style using fluorescent Day-Glo inks in multiple colors behind bold, black letterpress forms to define various parts of a poster. Day-Glo ink was relatively cheap and easy to print and stood out at night; it also allowed him to draw attention to all the performers on a multi-act bill. Knorr retired in the late 1970s and in 1988, the firm replaced letterpress with offset printing. It nonetheless continued to produce posters in the house style, like this one for a ceremony commemorating the induction of experimental blues-rock singer Janis Joplin (seen in a small photograph on the left of the composition) into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Joplin had died of a heroin overdose in 1970 after a brief career. At the event, the 10th and the last to be held at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, Myra Friedman said of Joplin: “Her presence was dominating, her sexuality so raw that she resembled a sort of majestic slattern, moving with the energy of a snapped cable in a storm.”On View
Not on view
