Repulsion
Ekel
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| Poster Origin : | Germany |
| Poster Size : | German A1 / 594 x 841mm |
| Poster Artist : | Jan Lenica |
| Poster Year : | 1965 |
| Poster Version : | First Release |
| Film Origin : | United Kingdom |
| Film Director : | Roman Polanski |
| Film Year : | 1965 |
Jan Lenica’s British Quad design for Polanski’s Repulsion is an iconic poster, but less familiar is this alternative design. Instead of adapting and recycling the same concept, Lenica’s fertile imagination produced a completely separate and equally striking visual metaphor.
As with the Quad artwork, Carol is isolated in a stark world, but this time she appears as if lost in a cold dark night, bare, vulnerable, and blinded by her featurelessness. Her naked form is not appealing but a pallid monstrosity, stripped of sexuality and femininity. Her arms appear locked awkwardly beside her, a significant pose that renders her utterly defenceless, trapped, and unable to function or fend for herself.
Her twisted mind is shown quite literally this time, as a writhing mass of tangled eel-like tendrils, elusive, unfathomable, uncontrollable. As the edges fray and begin to unravel it represents her psychological state perfectly and is, as the name requires, a suitably repulsive image.