Maggie's Graphic Arts Blog: The Golden Era of Travel Posters

The Golden Era of Travel Posters

Maggie Merkin

ARTH 230.01

T. Long

The era between the two world wars saw an unprecedented amount of artist innovation and prosperity in both Europe and North America, as artists began making a shift toward poster design and more graphic visual communication. Technology and the interest in the machine were at the height of societal innovation, allowing for other advances in art and design, as mechanical, machine-made, and industrial forms became an important influence in design techniques and styles. Cubism (an avant-garde art movement in which objects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in abstract forms) inspired a new direction for pictorial images to follow. The term “art deco” (derived by British art historian Bevis Hillier in the 60’s) is used to describe these popular geometric works, as it signifies the attentiveness of artists to graphics, architecture, and product design. Artists like Edward McKnight Kauffer, A. M. Cassandre, and Paul Colin, were such artists that influenced and inspired the cubist movement, as well as contributed to social and visual communication, propaganda, and advertising. Kauffer, born on December 14, 1890 (-1954), in Great Falls, Montana, began his working career at age 12, performing odd jobs to supplement his family income, as his father had abandoned the family when he was 3. By the age of 16, he traveled to San Francisco to work as a bookseller, taking art classes and painting on the weekends. In 1912 he stopped in Chicago to study at the art institute, and it was there that he attended the first American exhibition of modern art. After attending this exhibition, he decided to move to Europe to study and pursue art. Because of this decision, I consider him to be bold and incredibly influential, in that he took the risk of essentially dropping his schooling to pursue his artwork in cubism/futurism. His artwork impressed and caught the attention of Winston Churchill, an accomplishment that makes him even more impressive. A steady stream of poster art and other graphic design assignments enabled him to apply the principles of modern art and cubism to the problems of visual communications. He was influential to this movement because he preferred to advertise products using symbolic forms instead of money and sex (which some advertisements/posters use today). A. M Cassandre, born in 1901, was also an influential artist between the two world wars. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Academie Julian, when his graphic design career began at the age of 22, designing posters for poster commissions to earn money for his art and living expenses. He revolutionized French advertising using bold, simple designs that emphasize two-dimensionality, using simplified planes of color and reducing his subjects to iconographic symbols, and using geometric forms and symbolic imagery in his poster designs. These works contributed to social communication, in that his posters often were made for railways and steamship lines, because of the exaggerated scale and monolithic qualities that signaled strength and safety. He is particularly admirable, as his posters paved the way for other artists to visually introduce modes of transportation (that were extremely innovative in themselves) to the public, influencing modern advertisements/products such as maps and info-graphics. Paul Colin was born in 1892 and started his career as a graphic designer in 1925, when he was asked to become the graphics and set designer for the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris. He used strong, central images in his work that were animated by creating double images, scale changes, different drawing techniques, transparent images, and adding color shapes or bands to the side or behind the central figure. He was particularly influential, as during his artistic career and lifetime, he created dozens of powerful poster designs and works that continued to be commissioned, printed, and posted throughout Paris in the 1970’s- his artistic style and contributions to poster design allowed him to become so popular, that, his work continued to impress and influence people. These artists were thus incredibly influential during the period between the first and second world wars, as their posters and designs helped to communicate and advertise propaganda, merchandise and products, and even revolutionary travel services (such as trains and boats), to the general public.

A.M Cassandre, poster "L'Atlantique," 1931