Out of Africa, Lurid Coming Attractions

From Mexican papier ma^che to Peruvian ceramics, Japanese textiles and American “muffler men” created in L.A. auto repair shops, the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has presented a mind-boggling, eye-popping, globe-trotting variety of art and artifacts since it opened in 1992. But there has never been an exhibition quite like the current attraction, “Death-Stalking, Sleep-Walking, Barbarian Ninja Terminators: Hand-Painted Movie Posters From Ghana.”

Loaded with lurid images of impossibly muscular young men toting automatic weapons, martial arts heroes making all the right moves and scantily clad women in the clutches of monsters, the show consists of 72 one-of-a-kind advertisements for films. Most of the movies are American, and their titles and stars will be familiar to aficionados of action, horror and kung fu genres. But the posters--painted by hand on flour sacks--represent a little-known art form, which ran its course in about 10 years, from the mid-1980s to the mid-’90s, in Ghana.

“These posters were part of a mobile film distribution system, where guys with VCRs and TV monitors and little gas generators would travel around Ghana and take movies into the countryside,” says Ernie Wolfe III, a Los Angeles-based African-art dealer and collector. Wolfe saw his first Ghanaian movie poster in 1991, amassed a collection of them during the next few years, loaned works to the exhibition and published a book on the subject.

Working for companies with unlikely names--Pal Mal, Ziggy, Bombay, Princess and Rolls Royce--the distributors “would unfurl these paintings, nail them up on a wall and that would be the beginning of a movie marathon,” Wolfe says. “Then they would roll up the paintings, throw them on top of the bus and head off to the next town. Some of the paintings have broken down and become like babies’ blankets, they are so soft.”

The makeshift enterprise began with the widespread introduction of foreign videocassettes into Ghana in the mid-1980s, Wolfe says. To drum up business, the distributors commissioned local artists to create portable advertisements for the films. Paper wasn’t durable enough, so the artists began painting on the cheapest cloth they could find. Most of the posters are painted in oil and acrylic on 50-kilo flour sacks, which have been split open and spliced into 42-by-66-inch rectangles.

“One reason the posters are so interesting is that they are so varied,” Wolfe says. “They were created without any context whatsoever. The artists came up with images that were often completely from their imagination. They didn’t have to see the movie to make the poster. They wanted people to get excited, so everything is exaggerated. But at the same time, the scenarios they create are visual narratives; they are very complex and effective.”

*

Although African sculpture is widely admired and often cited as an influence on European and American art, African painting is little known and relatively few historical examples have survived. African artists paint on rocks and walls, and some who are currently active paint signs for barbershops and other businesses. But Wolfe views the movie posters as “the first example of utility-based painting on canvas and the first paintings to tell big stories.”

The art form died out in the mid-’90s as the video boom grew, he says. “By then, there were more film distributors and more movie titles than local artists could produce posters for. Also, the people who came to watch the movies were much more sophisticated after 10 years. They didn’t need this elaborate signage. A chalkboard with the name of the picture and the show time was sufficient.” Mass-produced paper posters also came into vogue and replaced the flour-sack paintings, he says.

The show is a natural extension of the Fowler’s program, says Doran Ross, director of the museum and curator of the exhibition. “I have been building the popular painting collection here for a long time, and we have done at least five exhibitions on popular painting in Ghana in the 20 years I have been here.”

Ross credits Wolfe with “rescuing the posters from oblivion,” but says the genre grew out of a rich West African tradition of advertising and props made for groups of traveling entertainers--most notably all-night theatrical and musical productions known as concert parties.

“That’s part of our interest in the movie posters,” Ross says. “But we are also very much interested in the whole process of globalization. These posters are a prime example of how Hong Kong meets Bombay meets Hollywood in southern Ghana. The disproportionate number of Hollywood posters probably reflects the reality, but Indian movies and Hong Kong action pictures are popular in Ghana as well.”

An intrepid traveler with a passion for offbeat--and downright bizarre--African contemporary art, Wolfe has made many startling discoveries in Africa. They include painted wood “fantasy coffins” fashioned in the shape of automobiles, airplanes, boats and animals, which he has displayed at his longtime gallery on Sawtelle Boulevard and at his former showcase at Bergamot Station.

*

Still, the Ghanaian posters are the greatest, Wolfe says. “This is a whole new tradition of painting that hadn’t been documented and is now obsolete. These tattered remains are about all that exists.”

He got hooked in 1991, when he saw a poster for “The Terminator” on a roadside cinema. But he was rounding up coffins to ship to Los Angeles and didn’t begin his pursuit of the posters until his next trip to Ghana.

At first, he found posters that were still in use and arranged to buy them. As they became scarce, he worked with agents to find paintings that had been rolled up and tucked away. “I collected them on probably 15 trips. They would come out in little groups,” Wolfe says.

Did the sellers think he was crazy?

“They couldn’t believe their good luck,” he says.

Wolfe won’t say how much he paid for the posters, and he dodges a question about how many he owns: “I’d rather not know.” Although he has sold a few, he says, “I’m more into hoarding at this point.”

Part of the fun of collecting the posters was getting to know the artists, he says. Self-taught young men who gained experience as apprentices, they were “painters in waiting who jumped at the chance to do this,” he says. “They made more money. It was a celebrity job, the sexiest job in town for a painter.”

While each image is unique, the artists often made more than one poster advertising a single film. “There’s an evolution within their interpretations of a film,” Wolfe says. What’s more, the project gave them a chance to grow as artists. “They didn’t do any of this for us. They did it completely for themselves,” he says.

When the work dried up, they went back to painting billboards and other signs, but they also continued to paint for themselves. “I’m working with this group of artists and hoping to show their work,” Wolfe says. “It will be interesting to follow where they go because they are the most highly evolved utility painters that I’ve ever seen in Africa.”

*

“DEATH-STALKING, SLEEP-WALKING, BARBARIAN NINJA TERMINATORS: HAND-PAINTED MOVIE POSTERS FROM GHANA,” UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 405 Hilgard Ave., Westwood. Dates: Through July 29; Wednesdays-Sundays, noon-5 p.m.; Thursdays to 8 p.m. Prices: adults, $5; seniors and non-UCLA students, $3; UCLA students, $1; ages 17 and younger, free. Phone: (310) 825-4361.