Masters Of The Poster 1896-1900

Masters of the Poster 1896–1900 by Roger Marx, published by Academy Editions in 1978, is a wonderfully visual plunge into the brief but glorious period when the advertising poster stopped being merely informative and began behaving like art.

The years 1896 to 1900 were especially fertile.

Europe was deep in the age of lithography, Art Nouveau, cabarets, exhibitions, bicycles, absinthe, theatres and increasingly sophisticated consumer culture.

In other words, exactly the conditions required for somebody to look at a blank wall and think:

“This would be improved by a magnificent woman in flowing robes selling soap.”

Roger Marx was one of the major critics and commentators on the decorative arts at the turn of the century, and this volume brings together work by some of the great poster artists of the period.

The poster had become a serious visual medium.

Artists were experimenting with flat colour, dramatic composition, stylised figures, bold lettering and the radical idea that commercial advertising did not have to be ugly.

This was apparently revolutionary.

The streets of Paris and other European cities became outdoor galleries, although rather less orderly ones than museums.

Posters competed for attention on walls, hoardings and kiosks.

The best had to do several things at once:

catch the eye,

communicate a message,

look stylish,

and persuade somebody to buy something.

Modern advertising still attempts this.

It has simply added pop-ups.

The period was dominated by some of the most recognisable names in graphic art.

Toulouse-Lautrec turned nightlife into visual shorthand.

Alphonse Mucha transformed women into swirling decorative compositions surrounded by flowers and hair with structural ambitions.

Jules Chéret brought movement and colour to the streets.

And many other artists helped establish the poster as a form worth collecting rather than merely replacing when the next event came along.

That is one of the great ironies of poster history.

These things were meant to be temporary.

They were printed cheaply.

They were pasted outdoors.

They were exposed to rain, smoke, dust and people attaching newer posters over the top.

Now surviving examples are framed, conserved, catalogued and sold for sums that would have made the original printers very interested indeed.

Masters of the Poster 1896–1900 captures that transformation beautifully.

It is not simply a book about advertising.

It is about the moment when graphic design, fine art and mass communication collided and discovered they quite liked one another.

The dates matter.

This is fin-de-siècle visual culture at full confidence, just before the twentieth century arrived and began changing absolutely everything.

The posters are full of optimism, luxury, movement and spectacle.

Bicycles represent freedom.

Theatres promise excitement.

Travel looks elegant.

Consumer products seem capable of improving one’s entire existence.

Advertising has always been ambitious.

Published by Academy Editions, this 1978 volume also belongs to a strong tradition of serious design publishing, produced for readers who wanted to look closely at historical material rather than merely receive a paragraph of summary and move on.

It is the sort of book that rewards slow browsing.

Typography matters.

Colour matters.

Composition matters.

Even the empty space matters.

And after looking at enough of these posters, modern advertising begins to feel slightly underdressed.

For anyone interested in poster art, Art Nouveau, graphic design, typography, advertising history or late nineteenth-century visual culture, this is a particularly appealing volume.

It also works perfectly well for people who simply like beautiful old images and do not feel the need to justify themselves academically.

Condition: Good. A sound used copy with normal signs of age and handling. Published in 1978, it has now survived long enough to become vintage design history itself.

No ISBN stated.

A richly illustrated celebration of the great poster artists of 1896–1900, from an era when even selling a bicycle or announcing a performance required serious artistic ambition.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — where the posters are elegant, the typography has standards, and nobody has yet discovered banner ads.

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