Extreme Canvas
Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana
by Ernie Wolfe, III

9" x 12", 305 Pages
Paperback: $45.00
Hardcover: $75.00
 

Essays by:
Clive Barker
LeVar Burton
Joe Coleman
Deirdre Evans-Pritchard
Walter Hill
Angelica Huston
John Milius
Roy Sieber
Paul Hayes Tucker
Gus Van Sant
Ernie Wolfe, III
John Yau

In the 1980s a group of entrepreneurs in Ghana created small-scale, mobile film distribution empires, hitting the road with videocassettes, television monitors, portable gas-powered generators and rolled-up, hand-painted, artist-signed canvas posters. This new medium created the first opportunity for some of the best young painters in Ghana to express themselves on a public scale. In the frequent absence of an original image upon which to base the work they had been commissioned to produce, the artists in this book inevitably created cinematic paintings that were largely interpretive and imagination-driven.

From Publishers Weekly
"Just as British television dramas are culturally repackaged for American audiences, so the hand-painted movie posters serve to claim the movies for the people of West Africa," writes one of many contributors to Extreme Canvas: Hand-Painted Movie Poster from Ghana. Edited by Los Angeles gallerist Ernie Wolfe III, the book includes 350 colorful, highly stylized illustrations for everything from "Children of the Corn 3" to "6 Lovers of Melody" (with a disproportionate number of action and other horror flicks in between) by artists such as Alex Nkrumah-Boateng, D.A. "Bright" Obens and Kofi Kuwirnu, all of whom contribute photos and biographical notes. John Yau, LeVar Burton, Clive Barker, Anjelica Huston and Gus Van Sant, among others, provide critical essays and commentary.

From Library Journal
African art scholar and West L.A. gallery owner Wolfe has performed a singularly stunning achievement by both introducing and cataloging over 350 luridly colorful examples of the unique way of advertising Hollywood and Hong Kong films in Ghana. Produced on recycled canvas flour sacks that have been stitched together, the posters were created mostly between 1985 and 1996 by a small group of artists to promote the movies shown in theaters and video clubs. To help elucidate this garish West African refraction of American pop culture, Wolfe has assembled numerous essays from a critically diverse array of artists, scholars, and filmmakers. Ghanaians, it quickly becomes apparent, are not chick-flick fans. The posters are divided among six film genres, including sf and fantasy, action and adventure, war and urban commandos, horror, comedy and drama, and martial arts. Writer and director Walter Hill nails it dead-on in his introduction to the action and adventure section when he writes, "To be brutally honest, many of these posters are more interesting than the films." Along with many lush, full-page representations of the posters, Wolfe includes photographs of and statements from the artists. In both idea and execution, Dilettante Press is carving a wonderfully quirky niche for itself in mainstream popular culture publishing with this visual treasure. Despite its seemingly narrow academic bent, this book is unconditionally and enthusiastically recommended for all pop culture collections. Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX