Vintage Posters Original Posters

A middle class was developing in France for the first time, and gave its name to this genre. World class artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec were leading poster designers of this period. Characteristics: Fanciful images reflect the material interests of a society discovering newfound freedom, and the leisure to enjoy it. Beautiful women and a soft palette typify these posters.

Best-known artists: Cappiello, Cheret, Pal and Steinlen

The era took its name from the Parisian gallery, Maison de l'Art Nouveau. Characteristics: These artists looked to nature for inspiration. Elaborate decorative designs incorporate twining vines and flowers, and at times are almost abstract. A rich, lush palette gives these posters a look like no other.

Best-known artists: Berthon, Mucha, and Toussaint.

The era's name derives from an art movement exhibited at the Exposition of Decorative Arts in Paris in 1925. Characteristics: Reflecting a fascination with machines and speed, these posters utilize broad planes of flat color, hard angles, and sophisticated typefaces to mirror the frenzied energy of the 1920's-1930's.

Best-known artists: Broders, Cappiello, Carlu, Cassandre, Colin

Spanning all eras and also presenting an opportunity for the collector with more contemporary tastes are an amazing variety of vintage posters. They advertise a world of products or services including military subjects, British Rail and London Underground; Swiss, German, and Spanish advertising; circus and magic events; and a dazzling array of movie posters. Popular subjects include wines, bicycles and steamship travel. Others are political, and reflect propaganda or workplace themes. Additional posters advertise sports, travel, automobiles, beverages and performances of theater, dance and opera.

Best-known artists: Villemot, Savignac, and Glaser

FROM "THE POWER OF THE POSTER"

EDITED BY MARGARET TIMMERS

In an age of instant transmission and computerized technology, it is perhaps surprising that the poster continues to flourish as a significant art form and primary means of communication.

What is a poster? The current Oxford English Dictionary definition is 'placard posted or displayed in a public place as an announcement or advertisement'. The word 'poster' probably derives from the practice of placing public announcements on posts; subsequently the definition of the word (like that of the French l’affiche) was expanded to refer to a public notice that is posted or put up in a public place.

Attempting a precise definition is difficult, but broadly speaking a poster may be defined by its function and form. At the edges of the definition lie the exceptions and variants that help us to understand what we normally mean by the term. In its function, a poster is essentially a product of communication between an active force and a re-active one. Its originator (individual, institution, business or organization) has a message to sell; the recipient, its target audience, must be persuaded to buy the message. The interchange takes place in the public domain.

In its form, the poster is generally identified by characteristics of size, shape and materials, and by means of production and communication. Mass-produced posters have commonly been printed to standard formats (based on paper sizes) specific to intended sites; individually made posters do not necessarily follow this pattern. The materials used are usually ink on paper, the image having normally been reproduced by a printing process. There are, however, many examples of posters that are original one-off designs which use any variety of graphic materials. The form most frequently relies on a combination of text and imagery, but either text or image can be used in isolation.

How does the effective poster achieve its aim? By its nature, the poster has the ability to seize the immediate attention of the viewer, and then to retain it for what is usually a brief but intense period. During that span of attention, it can provoke and motivate its audience - it can make the viewer gasp, laugh, reflect, question, assent, protest, recoil or otherwise react. This is part of the process by which the message is conveyed and, in successful cases, ultimately acted upon. At its most effective, the poster is a dynamic force for change.

Since posters may be aimed at virtually any sector of society, the means by which their messages are conveyed are crucial to their effectiveness. Above all, they communicate through the accessibility and adaptability of their graphic vocabulary. Posters address us in everyday, contemporary language, and appeal to us with directly compelling imagery. Through the distillation process which is part of their creative form, they have the ability to embody complicated thoughts and messages with a concentration of imagery akin to poetry. They can have broad popular appeal, and yet specifically target the individual who is alert to decode their deeper meaning. Their voice can vary from plain announcement to emotional, moral or intellectual appeal, or to imperative advertisement. Also, being cast in a colloquial idiom, they can change their tone and vocabulary to express and reflect shifting cultural values and codes of behavior.

Equally crucial in explaining the continuous popular appeal of the poster is the availability of the means of production. For the poster can be reproduced using any printing process, from state-of-the-art technology to simple duplication. In the beginning, it was the development by Jules Cheret of high-speed printing by color lithography that brought the emerging art form to millions; nowadays, the majority of posters are printed by color-offset lithography. But the fact that they can also be produced by means of screen-print, linocut, line-block, letterpress, woodcut, simple lithography, etc., is of importance to individuals and organizations where money is not available for sophisticated, expensive productions.

A third factor in understanding the continued power and appeal of the poster is the accessibility of its physical deployment. From the beginning, it was present in the public spaces we all inhabit - streets, trains and buses, Underground stations, shops and factories, theatres and cinemas.

JULES CHERET
From The Poster by Alain Weill

SAXOLEINE YELLOW DRESS
ID: 7170
Artist: CHERET
Size: 33.1” x 47.2”
Date: 1896

     In the middle of the 19th century, the industrial revolution turned the world upside down. The steam engine and its most spectacular application, the railway, marked the beginning of modern times. Urbanization and mass production were the consequences. Towns developed rapidly, and their walls were propitious for publicity. With the increasing production of manufactured goods, and, for the first time, supply exceeding demand, publicity became a necessity—and the advertisement, in the form of posters or through the press, invaded the world.
     All the evidence that has been gathered indicates that towns were covered with posters having one point in common: an absolute lack of artistic value. The poster existed but the art of advertising had not yet been born.
     In order for it to develop, in order for it to be recognized, the intervention of an artist of talent was necessary. Furthermore, this artist had to be an accomplished lithographer in order to arrive at a total mastery of color.
    It is Jules Cheret who is recognized, rightly, as the father of poster art. From 1860, he gave the poster the final impetus which allowed it to establish itself in France and the world over.
     Jules Cheret was born in Paris on May 31, 1836, into a family of artisans. Apprenticed to a lithographer, he familiarized himself with the tiresome labor of designing lettering for prospectuses, all the while taking drawing classes in the evenings. On Sundays he went to the Louvre to admire the works of Watteau and Fragonard, his models. Seeing no future in his work, he made two trips to London. Upon his return from the first of these trips, he created his first poster, for Offenbach's Orphee aux Enfers. It was a success, but without a future, and he resolved to cross the Channel once more. In London he discovered the American circus posters in loud colors, but, most important, met the man who would become his patron: the perfumer Rimmel.
     Rimmel brought him along on his travels (for instance to Venice, where he discovered Tiepolo, "his god") and advanced him the money to open a studio in Paris in 1866. There he installed English machines which allowed the use of stones of large sizes, and produced in quick succession two posters, for La Biche au Bois and Le bal Valentine, which opened the way to success.

The first designs still made timid use of color but Cheret was already working with a stunning economy of means: one stone for black which traced the design, one for red, and one for a graduated background with blues and greens at the top of the picture and yellows and oranges at the bottom. His first clients were mainly the great entrepreneurs of Parisian theater (notably the Folies-Bergere) but also manufacturers and tradesmen, who, in view of his success, began to call upon his services.

In 1881 he sold his studio to Chaix, while keeping charge of its artistic direction. In 1889 he received official consecration when his work was displayed at the Exposition Universelle, and he received the legion d'hon-neur. Manet hailed him as the "Watteau of the streets"—the critics, led by Felicien Champseaur, Gustave Kahn, and J.K. Huysmans, were unanimous in their praise.
In 1890 (by which time he had already produced more than a thousand posters), his most beautiful designs began to appear: he abandoned black outlines for blue and worked with primary colors. Achille Segard described perfectly his method of working:

"A sketch on paper is transferred by the artist to each of the lithographic stones. He does not use a grid. He uses the lithographic crayon to indicate half-tones; the ink makes for solidity, lets him define the essential features of the drawing. As many stones as primary colors: red, yellow, blue! The three impressions are sometimes completed with a fourth, to enrich the grays: from the apposition or superimposition of primary tone possible variety of coloring is obtained. When the artist distributed his reds, he thinks of what both will result when the blues extinguish them or exalt them. There is no technique or teaching that can be relied on here: it's a question of conjecture or feeling. One can feel very well how the artist distributes first of all the most brilliant touch of color—pure yellow or vermillion—and how it is around this touch that he seeks his gradations, his contrasts, all the nuances or delicacies which contribute to the perfect harmony of the whole."
     Speaking of Cheret's best output of the 1890's, Crauzat was moved to rave about "a hooray of reds, a hallelujah of yellows and a primal scream of blues."
     The year 1888 yields, among the plentiful examples of Cheret at his best, L'amant des danseuses; 1889, Le Moulin Rouge; 1890, Le Jardin de Paris, La Diaphane, Le Theatrophone; 1891, Yvette Guilbert, La Librairie Sagot, Le Savon Cosmydor; Les Pastilles Geraudel; 1892, L'Olympia, Les Pantomines lumineuses au Musee Grevin, Le Bal a I'Opera, Emilienne d'Alencon; 1893, L'Arc-en-ciel, Le Carnaval a I'Opera, Loie Fuller; 1894, L'Eldorado and Le Vin Miriam; 1895, Lidia and Papier Job; 1896, Les Grands Magasins du Louvre; 1897, La danse dufeu (Loie Fuller); 1898, Le Bal masque a I'Opera; and 1901, Cleveland Cycles. He executed a successful series forSaxoleine (1891-1894); another one for Palais de Glace (1893-1896), and for Halle aux chapeaux (1891-1892).
      Maindron, in his Affiches Illustrees of 1896, establishes the list of Cheret's works based on Beraldi's Graveur du XlXeme siecle: he counts 882 posters. From this time forward, his eyesight weakening, Cheret in effect abandoned the poster to devote himself to frescoes. Lucy Broido, in her recent study of Cheret, arrived finally at a total of 1,069 posters, the last, dated 1921, for the Casino de Nice. The patriarch of posters died in 1932 at the age of 96.
     If the "cherette", the central figure of most of his posters, his drawing or his composition seems classic today, if his colors no longer astonish, we must for a just appreciation return Cheret to the years in which they were produced, when the mere use of an alluring woman to sell a product was revolutionary.
     It is undeniably Cheret who pointed the way for all Europe. A look at the dates will show that the major works of those who followed his example come twenty years after his first designs.
     Cheret's style was furthermore so strong and original that he inspired disciples, mainly his colleagues at the Chaix printing house, who could never free themselves from his influence. We can cite Georges Meunier, certainly the most talented, author of some fifty posters, of which Bullier, Lox, L'Excellent, and Etrennes a la place Chichy are the best; Rene Pean, who specialized in travel posters; Lucien Lefevre and Lucien Baylac, so much like Cheret that they are confused with him; and Gaston Noury.
     Fortunately he also served as an example to artists of perfectly individualistic talents, who made the years 1880-1900 the golden age of the poster in France.