THE HISTORY OF THE LITHOGRAPHED POSTER SERIOUSLY ABRIDGED

Posters have been around long before Guttenberg printed the first Bible in the mid 15th century. People have always tried to figure out the easiest way to communicate a message, and posters were an obvious evolution. The major difference between posters from the middle ages until the middle of the 19th century was the addition of eye catching graphics, transcending from black & white to color, and the ability to print in a larger format. It was these factors that changed it all.

There was that narrow band of time from the late 1880’s to 1939 when the technology and the art had the opportunity to be perfectly matched. The inventory of The Omnibus Gallery is filled with hundreds of the greatest graphic designs ever done. That is our strength. You will see many images that are rarely seen outside of books and museums.

It was America, in the mid-1800s, that started to create posters in brilliant colours and in large sizes. They were primarily woodcut prints for circuses. These posters were often crude artistic attempts trying to get peoples attention, but sometimes they were truly magnificent images. America was in the forefront of poster production, techniques, and size. But making a poster from a wood cut would prove inferior to stone lithography, yet these circus posters were the foundation for the printing of the modern graphic that gave us that fifty year period when printing was spectacular.

Lithography was invented in 1796 by Aloys Senefelder. The printing process is based on the concept that water and oil will not mix. The lithographer and or artist would usually draw on limestone with a greasy substance and then just before printing the printer would cover the stone with water. Then apply the oil based ink which would only stick where the grease had been applied. It's a simple process but understanding the concept might require rereading this paragraph with your thinking cap on. Or just skip rereading because this information will not change your life.

The birth of color Lithography and the Modern poster took place in France under the tutelage and guidance of Jules Cheret in the 1860s. Cheret was the son of a typographer and he was the first to make colour lithography commercially viable. In the beginning, each color of the poster was drawn on a separate stone that sometimes required more than 15 stones to create the image. With time this process became simpler.

Artists etching their designs on the stone was unique to France. In other countries, trained lithographers did that work. It was Jules Cheret, who was both artist and lithographer, that started the trend in France. As he taught other artists how to design a poster he also showed them how to etch the stone. This was a time consuming process, often taking weeks, but it insured that the final product was what the artist had wanted and not what had evolved out of their control.

Before Cheret, most advertising was black and white and often just lettering with no image or lettering with a woodcut image. These early posters were considered an eyesore and were illegal. Therefore in the dead of night they were plastered on buildings and houses only to be pasted over by different ones the next night. They were literally littering the streets and pissing off the people's whose property was being defaced. Eventually designated places where posters could legally be posted were established and a tax was collected and a tax stamp put on each poster.

Even with the advent of color lithography, it was not until the late 1880s when the quality of color printing became quite sophisticated that poster art ignited in France and spread throughout the world. As artists became interested in creating posters people loved, the images went from being an eyesore to the 'art of the streets'. People began to collect posters and look out for their favorite artists. Besides Cheret, posters were embraced by such great artists as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, TH Steinlen, Pierre Bonnard, the Beggarstaffs, Alphonse Mucha, Will Bradley, Edward Penfield, etc.

Clearly, Toulouse-Lautrec was influenced by Cheret and Bonnard but he took poster art to a new level. Instead of bland, happy, beautiful faces and bodies he looked inside and saw the imperfections and pain. He was harsh in his vision while most posterists were more interested in the form than the soul of their figures. His were emotionally charged visions instead of cool, angelic, or breezy gaiety images of people.

In fact in the case of Lautrec no one has even attempted to emulate his style. Some of his techniques have been borrowed but the style never copied. On the other hand Cheret’s, Cappiello's, & Mucha's styles were greatly imitated.

But even in the Golden Age of posters, few artists had the goal of being a poster artist. Many saw it as a way to earn money. Few - Lautrec and Cheret were two - saw the potential of posters as art and embraced the medium. Many dabbled and moved on (Bonnard & Ibels), many planned to move on but found that their talent lay in posters (Cassandre) or disappeared into obscurity when they left the medium (Mucha).

By the late 1890s distinctive poster art was turning up in countries besides France. In America, Edward Penfield, Will Bradley, and others were introducing America to Art Nouveau through posters for publications such as The Chap-Book, Lippencott’s, and Harper's Bazaar. In Germany, the Munich Secession and in Austria, the Vienna Secession were also introducing Art Nouveau. Gustav Klimt did the first poster for the Vienna Secession.

The British boasted the incredible design team of James Pryde and William Nicholson, the Beggarstaffs, who created posters in the mid to late 1890s which influenced generations of poster artists and presaged the art deco movement. Their posters were often simple silhouettes. They used broad flat colours and integrated their very sparse lettering (usually just the name of the product or show) into the poster design. Their images are still on the cutting edge today, and sadly few of there images have survived outside of the Museum Of Modern Art and The Victoria & Albert in London.

In 1903, the poster art burst forth fully formed in Switzerland, with Emil Cardinaux, who is still considered the greatest of the Swiss posterists. His posters were known for their brilliant use of color and light and a feeling of spontaneity.

In Italy in the 1890s, Ricordi & Co. which printed sheet music expanded and began to print posters. They bought the best lithographic presses and hired Aldolfo Hohenstein as director of their new art department (he was a well regarded German lithographer) to lead and train the Ricordi staff. He trained both Leopoldo Metlicovitz and Marcello Dudovich in lithography. These three artists are considered the greatest of the Italian poster artists and produced some of the most beautiful and dramatic posters the world has seen. Unfortunately, there are very few of these images that have survived.

Right after the turn of the century the Germans also took poster art to a new level. The very ornate, detailed oriented posters of the Art Nouveau made way for the much simplified designs by Lucian Bernhard and Ludwig Hohlwein. Both artists were heavily influenced by the Beggarstaffs and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. In Bernhard's case the object being advertised and its name done in broad flat colours was usually all his poster contained. His style became known as Object Realism. Ludwig Hohlwein's designs included one, or, at the most, two people and also made great use of simple outlines. This simplification of design grew into the art deco of the 20s & 30s.

The Russian Revolution fathered an artistic revolution in the late teens which lasted until 1934 and produced some of the most innovative posters ever done. They are still considered avant-garde today. The Stenberg Brothers, Natalia Goncharova, Rodchenko, El Lissitsky, Kandinsky, Majakovsky, were all involved and believed in the Russian revolution. It was a time just before W.W.I that saw Kandinsky paint the first abstract painting in 1910, and after the revolution saw the birth of futurism, constructivism, and supremitism. The new Soviet Union nurtured its artists and they believed in the revolution. Then through the early 1930’s and culminating in 1934 when Stalin suppressed and imprisoned them. He made all forms of art, except social realism, illegal and he dictated the subject matter.

At the Turn of the Century, painters dominated poster art. But by the 1920s the discipline of graphic design had created its own school through the awareness that the lettering on posters was an important part of the overall image. So posters grew from simple illustrations with the lettering added at the last moment to compositions with a strong awareness of space and the desire to capture the viewer's eye, an almost architectural point of view. Also the industrial age had arrived with a growing love of form and function and a depiction of all things man-made. Art Deco grew out of this with its clean, simple lines, and worship of the manmade. Graphic designers took over posters and a new artistic profession was born. Painters who were trained in the graphic arts still did posters but usually in a completely different style than they painted.

Leonetto Cappiello, a master posterist at the Turn of the Century continued to be a master with his whimsical and eye-catching characters well into the Art Deco period. Cappiello had a tremendous influence on all of the graphic designers of the Art Deco period. All of the masters of that period have paid homage to him. He was the only artist to successfully make the transition from the Turn of the Century look to the power of Art Deco.

The greatest graphic designer of the 1920's and this century was A.M. Cassandre. He brought art deco to its fullest expression with his geometric precision, sense of perspective and design, and the use of broad flat colours. His designs were unmatchable Art Deco, but it was the attention to small details such as the seagulls in his poster for the Normandie that gave them life and a depth that transcended the mechanical nature of that period. The Omnibus Gallery has the largest collection of Cassandre's work for sale in the world.

In Paris in 1925 Paul Colin designed the poster of Josephine Baker's performance at the Theatre des Champs-Elysee which ushered in the Black jazz age. His bold and electrifying poster launched his career. In 1927 he depicted Josephine Baker in a portfolio called "Tumulte Noir" as a frenetically dancing fun loving group. Colin agreed with Cassandre and Loupot that, " The poster should be a telegram addressed to the mind.".

Charles Loupot, a brilliant colorist with an eye for simple and direct compositions was the most gentle of the new breed of poster artists in France. Jean Carlu, a fellow poster artist and friend noted that Loupot was "an unfailing master at creating an eye catching and poetic graphic expression of all the diverse elements of a poster." In 1923, Loupot became an overnight sensation and his career and reputation as an artist were made. The cause of this uproar were his two posters for Voisin. In Intran, the green Voisin poster was described as a "veritable painting. One thinks of a Fauve work - a Derain or a Vlaminck in his Cezanne period. The Voisin is in the middle of a glade, still and radiant, irresistibly evoking the name of Voisin which appears as an aerolight under the forest." R.L. Dupuy described Loupot as an artist who, "Instead of sticking his subject on a somber and unified background, he enriches it. He makes the background vibrate as though it actively participates in the image or perhaps it is the image which gives the background its life." Again, The Omnibus Gallery has the largest collection of his work for sale in the world

Fashion also went through sweeping changes after the turn of the century. With the publication of "The Dresses of Paul Poiret illustrated by Paul Iribe" in 1908, fashion illustration took on a whole new look. It depicted clothes never before seen in a simple, direct, and extremely colorful fashion. Paul Poiret became the top fashion designer in Paris. He was influenced by the simple fluid lines of the Orient and began to create long, lean clothes of sensual fabrics. In turn the depiction’s of his clothes required a new vision and Poiret believed Paul Iribe's elongated figures embodied this change - thus the long, thin model was born. The clothes flowed over her toothpick body. The rounded feminine body was a thing of the past.

Paul Poiret chose Georges Lepape to illustrate his second catalogue in 1911. Both were greatly impressed by the costumes and sets Leo Bakst designed for the Ballet Russe in their 1910 production of Scherazade and Firebird. The long flowing robes over pantaloons and turbans gave Poiret and Lepape the inspiration they needed to define an era and create "The Dresses of Paul Poiret as Envisioned by Georges Lepape". The simple, long lines and brilliant use of color forever changed art and fashion.

In the twenties photomontage began to appear in posters. Certainly the Russian Contsructivists embraced it or its look (they didn't necessarily have the equipment to do photomontage but imitated it). The most famous of the European photomontage artists was a Swiss posterist named Herbert Matter who did travel posters for the Swiss Tourist Board in the thirties. He, like the Russians, made no attempt to make the photomontage look natural but juxtaposed images and their sizes. He quite often made one figure disproportionately large compared to the rest of the image.

IN THIS ARTICLE WE HAVE ATTEMPTED TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF HOW THE POSTER EVOLVED, HOW IT WAS PRINTED, AND A FEW OF THE NAMES OF THE IMPORTANT ARTISTS. IT IS MEANT ONLY AS A SYNAPSES T0 GIVE YOU A FOUNDATION. BUT CERTAINLY WE GAVE YOU ONLY THE NAMES OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTISTS, AND NOT EVEN ALL OF THEM. NOT A WORD WAS MENTIONED ABOUT THE AWESOME WORK BY THE DUTCH AVANT GARDE, BELGIUM'S BEAUTIFUL ART NOUVEAU, AMERICA BETWEEN THE WARS, ETC. THERE WERE POCKETS OF GREATNESS HERE AND THERE AND WE MEAN NO HOSTILITY TOWARD THOSE IGNORED. JUST REMEMBER, JUST LIKE MOST DOCTORS, MECHANICS, AND TRANSVESTITES, MOST ARTISTS WEREN'T BRILLIANT. AND IF YOU ACTUALLY READ ALL OF THIS MONOLOGUE, CALL ME AND I'LL GIVE YOU A DISCOUNT ON YOUR NEXT PURCHASE.