Posters – Art for the people

The posters I grew up with were the wonderful psychedelic pop art posters of the Sixties and Seventies. .  They were possibly the first posters made for youth. On July 16, 1966, impresario, Bill Graham went around San Francisco on his scooter pasting up Wes Wilson’s now famous “Flames” poster announcing a concert on July 23. It had orange flame shaped letters vibrating against a lime green background. The posters slowly disappeared from the walls as people started collecting them. Aaron Skirboll writes for the Smithsonian Magazine, what was an advertisement had become “a coveted work of art”.

Postermania best describes what followed. Florescent colours, op art, pop art, all came together is a psychedelic explosion   that characterized art, design, and fashion of the time. Graham was instrumental in commissioning and marketing psychedelic concert posters by designers such as Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso, and Rick Griffin, who came to be known as the San Francisco Five. Moscoso explained “The musicians were turning up their amplifiers to the point where they were blowing out your eardrums. I did the equivalent with the eyeballs.” Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd were immortalized in florescence and zany photographs.

Across the Atlantic, Martin Sharp’s Exploding Hendrix poster style painting epitomized  “Swinging London” - a youth-driven cultural revolution with Carnaby Street fashions, Twiggy and Shrimpton, the Rolling Stones, Beatles, and pirate Radio stations. Every music fan, including us, had psychedelic posters on our walls.   The use of hand-made lettering encouraged many to make their own posters.

The Sixties and Seventies were also the age of protest: civil rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation, and the environment. Extensively used was the symbol for peace, originally designed for the British nuclear disarmament movement by Gerald Holtom in 1958.  

Dan Shafer in his essay ‘Protest Papers’, writes “protest posters have always been a voice for individuals with views that were silenced by oppression. They are an anonymous voice that speaks to a great number of people”.

Poster Art as we know it, emerged in the Belle Epoque of Paris (1871 to 1914) with the invention of lithography in 1798. Two years later the French artist, Cheret, used three lithographic stones for an image which allowed full colour, and other artists started to experiment as well.  The 1891 Toulouse Lautrec poster of Moulin Rouge was seen as an art work rather than simply an advertisement for the new Paris dance hall. The fact that 3000 copies were made, challenged the exclusivity of the art gallery paintings, making art accessible to people on the street.  The posters of Cheret, Mucha, Toulouse Lautrec, and Steinlin spread across Europe, each capital city reflecting its own imagery from bullfights in Spain to trade fairs in Germany. 

The crisp colors and use of negative space of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints exhibited in 1890 at L’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, introduced a sophisticated new aesthetic bringing a sense of modernity to French, English, and American artists.

Aubrey Beardsley in England developed his own elegant and dark style of black and white illustrations and posters. Ahead of his time, he wrote in an essay “The Art of the Hoarding” that while the art gallery painting as to “perplex an artless public”, the poster was utilitarian as well as aesthetic and with “no gate money, no catalogue”, escaping “the injustice of juries and the shuffling of dealers”.  Poster Art continued through Art Deco into Modernism and Bauhaus, in turn influencing advertising graphics. 

The powerfully designed  posters produced during World War I, both sides of the Atlantic, became central to the war effort – recruitment, raising funds, vilifying the enemy, raising feelings of patriotism, encouraging war production, and volunteers. In the absence of radio and television, it became an effective weapon. They were propagandist and designed to inspire ordinary people. Alfred Leete’s 1914 recruitment poster announcing to Britons that Lord Kitchener “wants you” inspired the more famous 1917 “Uncle Sam Wants You” poster in USA.  The aesthetic continued well into the 40s, most notably with the London Transport posters commissioned by the visionary Frank Pick. The recent   “Keep Calm Carry On” campaign continues the tradition of War posters.  

The Bolsheviks adapted the war time posters for the 1917 Russian Revolution where the language of constructivst art easily transferred to poster art. Centred on the theme of agitation with strong diagonals and disruptive colours, they were meant to aggressively polarize the opposing Red Brigade revolutionaries and the White Imperial Army. The posters of the Mao Revolution in China ignored the opposition, focusing instead on “The Great Leap Forward” towards a prosperous future and liberation. Colourful reds and yellows dominate, smiling faces depict euphoric happiness rather than the anger and rage of the Bolshevik posters.  This hyper realism created its own pressures on the Chinese public, powerfully critiqued by the contemporary artist, Yue Minjun, whose portraits have anxious frozen laughter.

The revolutionary poster spread to other countries in transition, best known - the Che Guevara posters of Cuba - and posters continue to be a major part of all protests.

Strangely enough, South Asia does not have a tradition of Poster Art despite cinema posters, religious posters of shrine and temple, and Kalighat satirical prints. The messages on decorated vehicles and T-shirts may be seen as a surreptitious form of poster art, wall chalking may be posters without paper. 

Posters are an effective way to communicate. Easy to design, print, and paste, it can reach a wide and varied audience.  The advertising industry in Pakistan realizes its effectiveness, but activism chooses wall chalking, and artists choose galleries.

Durriya Kazi

February 18, 2018