Modern Poster

Looks at the history of the modern poster and shows examples dealing with propaganda, politics, advertising, concerts, and exhibitions

The history of modern posters is one of adaptation and cross-fertilization, as this catalogue of an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art reveals. Toulouse-Lautrec borrowed the flat color surfaces and flowing outlines of Japanese prints to produce an almost photojournalistic view of the urban scene. In A. M. Cassandre's posters of ocean liners and trains, the mechanistic tangle of Fernand Leger's oils has been transformed into pure icons. In the contemporary commercial posterwhether Japanese, Polish, Dutch, Venezuelan or Americaninnovations in graphic design, abstraction, typography and advertising art are endlessly recombined in pictures mingling wit, inventive imagery and bold color. Works by Klimt, Schiele, Ben Shahn, Man Ray, Warhol, Richard Avedon and scores of less famous artists complement an informative text by Wrede, director of the museum's department of architecture and design.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

More than 300 examples taken from the Museum of Modern Art's collectionand shown in a recent exhibitionclearly demonstrate the power of the modern poster to convey ideas quickly by combining fine and applied art for aesthetic, commercial, and political purposes. In the last century, what we call "modern" has converged with a maze of styles to produce recognizable genresincluding poster art. The posters, superbly reproduced here, run in a loose chronology from 1879 to 1986, with the most powerful images from the 1930s and World War II. Preceding the plates is an excellent text by Wrede, director of MOMA's Department of Architecture and Design. Highly recommended. David Bryant, Belleville P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.