Poster Art

Poster art developed in the mid- to late 19th century, concurrent with the technological, social, cultural, political, and economic shifts of the Industrial Revolution. These shifts led to the rise of cities and the development of a Modernist way of seeing, both of which influenced, as well as were influenced by, the poster. Posters are mass-produced, large-scale, visually stimulating, two-dimensional designs that combine text and image on a printed sheet. They are mass communications tools, used to sell, to persuade, and to inform.

Traditionally, posters were produced for public display in the public sphere—in high-traffic areas such as the shopping and entertainment zones of cities and on roadways. As visual communication devices, they are effective because of their size, the way they are embedded in the environment (with multiple copies placed in strategic locations), and their innovative and seductive graphics, which are designed to stand out amid the visual jumble of city life. Posters are ephemeral and transitory (they go up, they age, they come down), but they are also significant documents of popular culture and social history, because their content reflects current social, political, and cultural events. Although poster art developed primarily for commercial advertising purposes and are used extensively for political propaganda, posters have an equally long history of use as a medium for social and political messages.

The origins of the 19th-century poster can be traced back to the first uses of publicly displayed messages. An early known example of this type of communication is the ancient Greek axones, which were wooden tablets placed on movable notice boards. There is also evidence of public messages from the ruins of the Roman city of Pompeii, whose walls still carry Roman announcements and proclamations. Official, governmental writings on the wall are now known as dipinti, and unofficial marks, placed by individuals, are known as graffiti. By 1452 in Europe, Johannes Gutenberg perfected a method to print with movable pieces of type onto sheets of paper. (China had already [Page 1152]developed a movable type system, as well as paper and a system of wood block printing.) Gutenberg's innovation led to an enormous increase in the circulation of words and images. Access to a greater flow of ideas and information as well as the ability to publish affected the political sphere, because the church and the state, the authorities in medieval society, were no longer able to control the distribution of the printed word. For example, in 1539, Francis I of France issued an order to control the putting up of posters. In 1653, another order was issued by the French regime, which forbade, under the threat of death, the printing or displaying of posters without official permission.

Printing technology did not change much from the 16th to the 18th century, and up until the end of the 18th century, posters incorporating images were scarce. In 1796, a method was developed to facilitate the printing of images. This process, lithography, made it possible to print inexpensively in large sizes, to produce multiple copies, to print images with a full scale of tones (from black to white), and to use color ink to produce vibrant color images. With lithography, the artist draws directly on to the printing surface, which allows for a free, open, and expressive design and for the incorporation of letters with the illustration (previous to lithography, text was printed with the letterpress method and images with woodblock techniques). Jules Chéret was an innovator of color lithography, and his work elevated poster making into an art. Chéret's posters, which featured brilliant colors and images of carefree, beautiful women, enlivened the streets of Paris and became immediate collector items. These posters, which advertised cabarets, perfume, soaps, and cough drops, among other consumer products, helped define the modern poster and shape advertising conventions (using women and sex to sell products) and added a layer of visual complexity within the urban environment that contributed to new ways of seeing by creating assemblages of images and messages.

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