| Professionals, students and an increasing amount of curious and demanding public all continue to make Chaumont an annual international forum for graphic arts. For the past three years, the Festival was structured around four primary concepts: Presenting today’s graphic arts as they really are, restoring the historical dimension of graphic arts, giving posters the place they deserve and making Chaumont a national and international platform. |  |
International Platform Swathed in Design – Simone Cappa
Professionals, students and an increasing amount of curious and demanding public all continue to make Chaumont an annual international forum for graphic arts. For the past three years, the Festival was structured around four primary concepts: Presenting today’s graphic arts as they really are, restoring the historical dimension of graphic arts, giving posters the place they deserve and making Chaumont a national and international platform.
The 2006 Chaumont Festival pursued the most vibrant scenes in Europe and the focus gazed towards Berlin, epicenter of trends, not limited to contemporary art but also including fashion, electronic music and architecture. The objective of this European project was simple. Combine prominent posters of the past with today’s ambitious creations and make them available to the public while at the same time providing professionals with a creation, distribution and research tool. “5x Berlin,” curated by Fons Hickmann m23 examined five different artistic points of view and plugged spectators directly into the creative outlets of artists working in Germany’s capital city. This included Anschlaege.de, comprised of Axel Watzke, Christian Lage and Steffen Schumann, Atak, aka Georg Barber, Cyan including Daniela Haufe, Detleif Fiedler, Susanna Bax and Katja Schwalenberg, Fons Hickman m23 and Angela Lorenz.
Apart from the graphic scene in Berlin’s representation at The Garage, the Festival also presented work of the German master Frieder Grindler, who has won numerous awards for his theatrical posters. Grindler’s work can be categorized as somewhere between photography and graphic design. Also on display at the exhibition, Drive-in par Jean-Marc Ballee, which involved the artist taking residency in Chaumont (he is originally from Paris) and setting up his images at a park during the fair. He creates an urban story of the town using a cross between public benches and billboards.
The definitive highlight of the Festival was the unique panoramic collection of 20,000 contemporary posters from an international pool of graphic designers. The jury did not pick a theme for this sector in order to preserve diversity, amongst entrants from 60 different countries. In addition, the Festival paid tribute to the recently deceased great Polish designer Henryk Tomaszewski. Over 100 of his posters were on display at the Musee de la Creche.
Also, noteworthy was the 4th Salon of Graphic Publishing, which included 21 independent publishing organizations, brought together by the association Des Oh Des Bah, during the opening weekend of the Festival, to present books, posters and sound. Dialogue included techniques of reproduction, offset to screen printing and from lino-cutting to printing. A few of the publishers included Terrenoire of Lyon, La Chienne of Lille, Catchascatchcan of Stasbourg, XXX Prod of Epernay and Peau de Lapin of Paris.
The Festival was directed by Pierre Bernard, Alex Jordan and Vincent Perrottet, with Jean-Francois as Delegate General. This team has worked together since 2002, remaining true to their goals of bringing together historical and contemporary graphic art which can be appreciated by both professionals and the public alike.
