COMPLIMENTARY COPY
Published Weekly By Joel Sater Publications www.antiquesandauctionnews.net
VOL. 43, NO. 37 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14, 2012
Social Networking In 19th-Century Paris T
his summer, the Milwaukee Art Museum has been transporting visitors to nineteenthcentury Paris with its feature exhibition, “Posters of Paris: Toulouse-Lautrec and His Contemporaries.” The exhibition brings together the finest French examples from the golden age of the poster, resurrecting the boulevards of 19th-century France. Now the exhibition will travel to Texas and entertain visitors to the Dallas Museum of Art. “Posters of Paris” is scheduled to be on exhibit there from October 14th of this year to January 20th of next year, but everyone can enjoy the exhibit via the book that accompanies it. It’s no secret that vintage posters are rock stars in the world of Ephemera collecting, and the posters in this exhibit and its catalog are all headliners. With images of crowded dance halls and smoky caberets, this vibrant collection of posters from the Belle Epoque explores the birth, development, and continued popularity of a graphic genre. Curator for the exhibition and author of outstanding volume of the same name that accompanies it, (Publisher: Delmonico Books, Prestel,) is Mary Weaver Chapin. Chapin is the former Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and is currently the Curator of Graphic Arts at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. Talking about the posters, she stated,
products, and new technology. The posters were audacious, colorful, and sometimes even profane. Art critics praised the artistic posters for bringing joy and
masses,’ ‘an open-air exhibition’ that changed daily as new posters were pasted up.” “Some critics,” she continued, “went further, describing
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Divan Japonais, 1893. Poster for the café-concert the Divan Japonais. The poster depicts three celebrities: the dancer Jane Avril (center), critic Edouard Dujardin (right), and singer Yvette Guilbert (upper left corner), who is recognized by her trademark black gloves, long neck and gaunt figure.
theatre productions to “the cancan,” bicycles to champagne, brightly hued, larger-than-lifethe posters as superior to the size posters with bold typograpaintings found in exhibitions.” phy and playful imagery punctuAdvertising everything from ated the streets of turn-of-the-
Jules Chéret, L’Horloge: Les Girard, 1875-1878 or 1880-1881. Poster for a performance by contortionists at the Horloge café-concert.
century Paris. “Posters of Paris” features more than one hundred of these posters (including a few designs that were originally censored) by artists hailed as masters of the medium: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret, Pierre Bonnard, and Alphonse Mucha, and others. These artists drew from an array of styles, from Byzantine and Rococo to Realist and Art Nouveau. Posters were the popular tools for advertising and communication at the time, similar to today’s social media. The arrival of a new poster was newsworthy and could draw a crowd. In some cases, police intervention was required. Billposting itself turned competitive and evolved into public theater, adding to the spectacle one encountered on the streets. “By the 1890s, artistic posters covered the boulevards throughout the city; they were posted on billboards, scaffolding, Morris columns, kiosks, in shop windows, and even pulled through the streets on mobile publicity carts,” said Chapin. “These posters were the object of intense fascination, and the term affichomanie (poster mania) was invented to describe the craze. Paris would not have been Paris without them.” Posters were so popular that (Continued on page 2)
Pierre Bonnard, France-Champagne, 1889-1891. Advertisement for E. Debray’s champagne made near Reims.
“These works celebrated the color to daily life and for giving dawn of new entertainment, new Paris a free ‘museum for the
Leonetto Cappieloo, Chocolat Klaus, 1903. Poster advertising “the supreme” Delecta chocolate, manufactured by the Swiss company founded by Jacques Klaus.