Post Searching for Poster

October 15, 2011 12:44 PM

What is your go-to poster? The one that you hang up in your office or bedroom and just derive profound enjoyment from?

Just finished re-reading The Fountainhead and was moved by how Gail Wynand has a poster of Roark hanging in his office that serves as a bulwark, anchoring him down to reality. Right now I have this picture hanging in my office, which I love. However, I would love to hang another one that could inspire me.

Caveats: Can't be too photoshopped and can't be too cheasy. I guarantee that I will not cheapen your favorite picture - it will be printed up and framed fittingly.

posted by eytanb to home & garden (46 answers total)

I guess cheesiness is in the eye of the beholder, but I have this poster and I like to think of it as a mini chutzpah machine.
posted by threeants at 12:46 PM on October 15, 2011

I've had this Great Escape poster for years and I just can't quit it.
posted by thirteenkiller at 12:55 PM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

I have two. "Saturn Devouring His Children" is always interesting to sit and contemplate. And then this book illustration called "Lady of the Night," which I look at when I'm feeling very stressed out or can't get to sleep.
posted by hermitosis at 12:57 PM on October 15, 2011 [4 favorites]

You can't go wrong with a high-quality map of the world, especially one with physical detail. You can use removable stickers to keep track of where you've been, where your friends are, or where you'd like to go someday.
posted by Rhaomi at 1:06 PM on October 15, 2011

I have a large panorama map above my desk of "Vancouver Sea to Sky", as I've flown over it dozens and dozens of times on my way to Vancouver airport coming back from the north, and I can see many of the mountains from across the Strait of Georgia where I live.
posted by KokuRyu at 1:17 PM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

I've had a print of Kandinsky's Composition 8 on my wall for seven years. I have yet to get tired of looking at it. YMMV.
posted by phunniemee at 1:17 PM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

Any Rothko print. The thing I like the most about Rothko prints is that they're such a disservice to the original work. They have to be. The print is just a reminder, a cue. Which prompts me to escape into the memory of what it's really like. To the times and places and memories of real Rothkos. So that's my go-to. Literally.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:22 PM on October 15, 2011 [8 favorites]

i collect WWI posters and this is my favorite-the 4th Liberty Bond Loan by Joseph Pennell. I also very much like The Girl on the Land, too.
posted by Ideefixe at 1:33 PM on October 15, 2011 [2 favorites]

Here's a whole list of my favorites.
posted by TheBones at 1:35 PM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

Vintage poster blog.
posted by the cuban at 1:42 PM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

A map of the constellations.
posted by cmoj at 1:51 PM on October 15, 2011

Came here to say Rothko although it helps if you've seen them in real life.
posted by the young rope-rider at 2:06 PM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

I won't claim it isn't cheesy, but this painting always makes me smile.
posted by and for no one at 2:09 PM on October 15, 2011 [4 favorites]

I have two big posters of Van Gogh's sunflowers. He painted them to decorate the Yellow House for Gauguin. I love the idea of Van Gogh painting them with only his friend in mind, and the masterpiece that arose out of that gesture of friendship.
posted by rabbitbookworm at 2:14 PM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.
posted by auto-correct at 2:47 PM on October 15, 2011 [5 favorites]

your life is your life
from here
posted by gursky at 2:57 PM on October 15, 2011 [9 favorites]

I have Dali's City of Drawers in my bedroom.

I have two large print outs of the 1944 U.S. Army Engineers illustration of the Mississippi River in my living room.

I can get lost in both for hours. I find the detail (and sheer magnitude of work in the latter) very inspiring.
posted by subject_verb_remainder at 3:17 PM on October 15, 2011 [8 favorites]

I have an unholy love of this poster, but I've never seen it for sale d:

http://www.20x200.com/ has a bunch of different styles of art; some of which might appeal. I'm a sucker for a bunch of the typography/drawing/graphic/abstract stuff.

http://www.thumbtackpress.com/ is another site which also collects up a bunch of art; some of which feels like a similar kind of aesthetic to the poster you already have.
posted by ambilevous at 3:19 PM on October 15, 2011 [3 favorites]

I like climbing.
I like beer.

Hence, John Sherman Drinking a Beer while Free-Climbing.

A friend saw it and went out and bought his own, instantly.
posted by kurosawa's pal at 3:24 PM on October 15, 2011 [3 favorites]

When I was a cube-dweller, I always found a place for Escher's Relativity.
posted by klarck at 4:04 PM on October 15, 2011

A recently acquired favorite featuring The Delafolie Brickyard, Eragny, Sunset, 1885 by Camille Pissarro was the Jewish Museum exhibition poster. An old favorite is a poster of Van Gogh's The Pink Peach Tree. A favorite lost to a long ago flood was David Goines' Chez Panisse Second Birthday Celebration poster. Good in the kitchen. I get by with a couple of other reproductions of Goines images now. And an odd French poster of (odd) root vegetables.
posted by Anitanola at 4:14 PM on October 15, 2011

I've always wanted to own a poster from the old Jack Nicholson film The Last Detail. No particular reason.
posted by permafrost at 4:16 PM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

I personally hanker after the beautiful Amnesty International poster that hung on the wall of Toby Ziegler's office in the West Wing.
At home, I have and love gazing at Patrick Caulfield's After Lunch but that's maybe more for quiet contemplation that for work inspiration.
posted by penguin pie at 4:24 PM on October 15, 2011

I love David Hockney's Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio so much that for a while I had one copy of this LACMA poster in my home office and another at work.
posted by carmicha at 4:43 PM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's okay, you can all stop looking for other posters now, because there is this one.

I have had this since I was 15, and it always makes a room feel so much warmer and friendlier, like there's an open fireplace instead of a poster.
posted by lollusc at 5:09 PM on October 15, 2011 [4 favorites]

I've got a poster of a few of the pages from the Archimedes palimpsest. I had to translate some of the Greek on one in college, and now I'm a physicist, so I'm excited by the imaging techniques they used to pull out the underlying text. Basically it's important to me in a way I wouldn't expect it to be for very many other people -I'm always thrilled when someone asks about it and seems to be really interested in the story.

That Sherman poster is pretty crazy though.. maybe I'm wrong in having only one poster.
posted by nat at 5:15 PM on October 15, 2011

I have a sepia print of this photo of Alfred Percival Maudslay in the southern chamber of the Casa de Monjas at Chichen Itza in my living room.
posted by gudrun at 5:18 PM on October 15, 2011

At some point during a move, I lost my Lunar Module Earthrise poster.
posted by muddgirl at 5:24 PM on October 15, 2011

A map of the universe.

Also available is a map of the milky way.

Both are THE best things to put on your wall besides paint and wallpaper.
posted by Heretical at 5:26 PM on October 15, 2011 [2 favorites]

I have a long-term fondness for this Woody Guthrie poster, although I don't have it up at the moment.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:33 PM on October 15, 2011 [2 favorites]

sous les pavés la plage is the image that's been doing it for me lately.
posted by .kobayashi. at 5:37 PM on October 15, 2011 [2 favorites]

The original vinyl edition of Steve Martin's A Wild and Crazy Guy came with an 8x10 print that looked like this. I've had one framed ever since I was a wee mintcake and got my first copy of the record...you can find the LP insanely cheaply (as it was a huge hit and they made a ton) in used record stores and it will very often still have the picture inside. It remains an inspiration.

Best fishes.
posted by mintcake! at 5:51 PM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

Reflections by artist Nancy Seamons Crookston is my go-to. I have a reproduction in oil on canvas. It is so soothing and restores my faith in mankind.

Looks to be a little too sedate for you ;)
posted by JujuB at 7:04 PM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

Song of the Lark by Jules Breton, though I've never seen a poster that does the light of the original justice. I've had that one hanging in my workspace for years (like 15 now); it speaks of hope to me.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:13 PM on October 15, 2011 [2 favorites]

I gave this poster to my little brother during his senior year in high school. Heh heh.
posted by jayder at 7:42 PM on October 15, 2011

I have two posters of Irish goddesses (Boann and Sionna [sadly no link]) by Jim Fitzpatrick that I've owned since I was a teenager. I was given them from the scrap heap and had them blu-tacked to my wall when I was a sixth-former (junior in high school) and then in my college years. My ex had no use for them, so they were put away while we were together. After we split, I had them restored and framed. Now they have pride of place on my living room wall. Apart from their beauty and the way they reflect my interest in Celtic mythology, they have a great deal of personal meaning because of my history with the posters and because they're the images of strong women of the sort I'd like to be.
posted by immlass at 8:03 PM on October 15, 2011

I have this poster of Stephen Colbert giving me a thumbs up hanging above my desk. It makes boring essays a lot easier!
posted by Deflagro at 8:14 PM on October 15, 2011

If you're at all into the 1930s WPA aesthetic, I've found the Library of Congress collection of WPA posters to be really inspiring for work. They've got over 900 posters, most of which have been digitized (see here for a listing of them). If that link doesn't post, just search for the WPA collection in the Digital Prints and Photos section of the Library of Congress website.
posted by librarylis at 9:26 PM on October 15, 2011 [7 favorites]

Call me a dork if you wish (most everyone else does), but my two current and one passed on are a framed Army of Darkness personally autographed to me by Bruce Campbell (the sadly deceased one), the "The existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon" Dr. Manhattan/Watchmen poster (unframed), and my framed Bachelor of Arts in Medieval Metaphysics from Miskatonic University.
posted by Samizdata at 10:29 PM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

This gorgeous reproduction of a Metropolis poster is on sale right now.
posted by dhartung at 10:43 PM on October 15, 2011 [3 favorites]

My favorite self affirmation here.
posted by ersatzkat at 4:46 AM on October 16, 2011

Another Hockney nod, I've been through two of his Garrowby Hill but can no longer find it, so I replaced it with a (framed) poster that I like a lot less.
posted by Short Attention Sp at 5:25 AM on October 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is my all-time favorite poster (non-serious, and yet)
posted by Mchelly at 6:54 PM on October 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

librarylis, THANK YOU! Those WPA posters are fantastic. (OK, OK, some are just plain weird, like "Syphilis: Mence to Industry" -- I mean, isn't danger to big busines everyone's sole reason to avoid VD?)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:11 AM on October 17, 2011

Supernatural collective nouns.
posted by craven_morhead at 10:23 AM on October 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

social print studio offers a poster making service in which they form a grid of images based upon a provided tumblr or facebook album. It also offers twitter follower/following avatars, and facebook friends but I might find this to be less soul enriching and creative than the previous options.

Might not be exactly what you are looking for but I have purchased two based upon personal or aesthetically pleasing images of my choice and have been extremely impressed with the result. Perhaps if you find a number of images to your liking you might find use of this.
posted by prithee at 1:56 PM on October 17, 2011