Vintage David Lance Goines, Rare Early "Metropolis" Film Poster, Berkeley

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(#91) METROPOLIS:

Edition of 2143 of which 300 copies are signed 1-300, 26 are signed … Read more Click on image for detail
(#91) METROPOLIS:

Edition of 2143 of which 300 copies are signed 1-300, 26 are signed A-Z, and five sets are signed as progressives.

April 9, 1981 13 colors 18" x 24"

Client: Tom Schmidt, The Pacific Film Archive, UC Art Museum, Berkeley CA 94720. Telephone (510) 642-1413 A-Z: Artist's own use. Progressives: One set to The Pacific Film Archive Robertson.

(Print, July/August 1982)

Model: The artist's ATF Solna Chief 24 Offset Lithographic Press

WILL BE SHIPPED FALT BETWEEN TWO SHEETS OF MASOINTE

THE ARTIST WROTE THIS ABOUT THIS POSTER:
We're trapped in our own time. We look at the past through modern eyes, imagining that its residents were just like ourselves with a few minor cultural differences. We forget how much indoor plumbing and electricity have changed our world into something that Julius Caesar would have been unable to distinguish from a kingdom powered by magic. We accuse our ancestors of crimes and reproach them with ignorance, sure that if we had lived among them we could have prevented the errors of their ways.

Attempts to foretell the future fall into the same snare. The residents of the future are not going to be just like us except riding around in personal helicopters and working a three day week and wearing white togas or something. They're probably going to envy us our simple and uncomplicated lives, and pity our ignorance and imagine that we were just like them except that we wore deeply unflattering garments and silly hairstyles.

We visit the past in memory, and alter it by remembering it differently. The future lives in anticipation, and we try to change it to benefit ourselves. The further away from the present, in either direction, the fuzzier and more uncertain things become. We've been in the past all our lives, so we have some clear grasp of what that end of the timeline means. We haven't been to the future yet, but we will-we just don't know for how long, and we don't know what we should do when we get there. Tomorrow, for example, is the future, and with any luck I shall indeed visit it, and live there for one full day, and then leave. But I won't be back. See less