An Interview with Poster Artist Klaus Staeck: “My Anger Is Still There”
Poster art: “There is a chance” (Poster: Klaus Staeck)
26 March 2012
Klaus Staeck has been fighting destruction of the environment for over forty years with posters. He ascertains that awareness is there, but we still do not change. In this interview we discuss the impact of art, working with scissors and tape, and the original as a fetish.
Mr. Staeck, the title of your exhibition, which will be shown in over 40 Goethe-Instituts, is “Nothing Accomplished!” – is the mood more one of disenchantment or of hope?
The basic feeling is one of disenchantment. When I made my first environmental posters forty years ago, they were met with a general lack of understanding. In the meantime things have changed. These days, people are much more aware of the problem. The decisive question however still remains – how can it be transformed into practical politics? We know about the destructive effects of many of our actions and we still refuse to change our ways. Who in our part of the world really needs an off-road vehicle? And who actually hit upon the idea that with bio-fuel we can continue to go on tearing around the country? I could go on all day. My anger is still there and is even growing.
You can read the entire interview with Klaus Staeck in the Magazine of the web portal goethe.de/climate – Culture and Climate Change.
How can we sensitize people for the topic?
Art has only one chance in this case and that is to create haunting images. It has to express something in images that would have hardly any effect in words. The technique of collage is a perfect vehicle for this.
Photo gallery: Klaus Staeck’s Striking Work
Why did you decide on the poster as your means of artistic expression?
The poster became the alternative when I realized that although people were really interested in my work they said they did not need any signatures, any numbering under a drawing, but that they would like to buy the subject in the form of a poster if it did not cost more than five marks. The first step was a poster campaign in Nuremberg in 1971, in which we did not function as artists, but as an anonymous company working parallel to the large Dürer exhibition. Our message was, “Would you rent a room to this woman?” using a portrait of Dürer’s old mother. The reaction was so overwhelming that it soon became clear to me that there is a chance.
How were the posters back then made?
Artist Klaus Staeck: “Create haunting images” (Photo: crazynd)
In the last few years you have produced fewer collages that deal with the subject of the environment. Why is that?
My work at the art academy takes up so much of my time that I have hardly any time to do new work. I comfort myself knowing that I have done something about almost all the environmental topics. There are subjects that are sadly more relevant today than when they were first created; that is my particular problem. Every time a tanker runs aground, all I need to do is take my oil-spill poster out of the cupboard and change the name of the ship. I also produced several posters on nuclear energy. This is one of the few examples that shows that the tough battle fought by many citizens has brought about decisive political change at least in Germany.
The interview was held by Jeannette Neustadt.
Klaus Staeck, born in Pulsnitz in Saxony in 1938, studied law at university from 1957 to 1962 and worked at first as a lawyer. He soon shifted his focus however to working as a publisher and graphic artist. In 2006 he was elected President of the Academy of Arts in Berlin and was re-elected to this post in 2009.
