Not your average form of art
Out Of The Borders
Advertising: between art and business
by Laura De Cesare
Advertising is always around us when we have lunch, go out on the street, read a news-
paper, or scroll our Instagram home page. But, how does it change over time? How many differences do we have now if we look at the past? And how is the relationship between art and advertising?
Toulouse Lautrec
When
we think about art, maybe we never imagine that advertising could also be a form of art.
Her story is ancient, and it starts at the end of ‘800. In this period, the first advertising poster real-
ised by Toulouse Lautrec was born.
Toulouse Lautrec was a French painter and a pioneer of graphic design. In 1891, the Moulin Rouge’s director commissioned the young artist to create a poster to announce the arrival on the stage of a new dancer: Louise Weber.
From this moment, advertising language changed. Toulouse Lautrec showed details about bohèmien life in Paris, using simple lines and intense colours, leaving emotions permanently in the observer’s mind.
© www.metmuseum.org/art/collection
He became one of Paris’s most crucial illustrators and designers in a few years. Lautrec helped the avant-garde language become fa-
25