Revisiting lost works: PAPILLON and CUBA

I previously wrote about Amsel’s poster work for both PAPILLON and CUBA, neither of which were used for the films’ main marketing campaigns. I’m happy to share some new images I created, following digital tinkering and restoration, thanks to a recent auction of high quality, 1:1 screen prints.

PAPILLON

Tom Jung did the original release poster, though cropped excerpts of Richard Amsel's art -- featuring portraits of Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman -- were incorporated into the film's 1977 rerelease poster.

I had acquired a number of images of Amsel's work over the years, yet the color reproductions always varied wildly, from saturated, reddish browns to more vivid blues. Happily, a recent auction of a 1:1 high quality screenprint mockup finally allowed me to see how the original art was supposed to appear.

So... Is it brown? Blue? The answer, I found, is somewhere in between.

After some digital restoration, I was able to create this new digital image, which has much greater fidelity to Amsel's original color scheme.

CUBA

Now this is something I've spent 25 years looking for. The original art for CUBA was auctioned off by Christie's in 1987, following Amsel's death. The catalog for this auction had only a small black and white image of the work. The only color image I would later acquire was a small, fuzzy Polaroid given to me by Judy Goldman.

When a 1:1 silkscreen print of Amsel’s work came up for auction, I jumped at the chance to buy it. It now resides in my work studio, hung on the wall beside my desk. I suspect this was an original studio mockup, as the lettering at the bottom was glued-on. (I digitally removed the cut lines.)

To read more about the film, and see some of Amsel’s alternate concept sketches, check out my 2023 blog post.