“By the 1890s, artistic posters covered the boulevards throughout the city; they were posted on billboards, scaffolding, Morris columns, kiosks, in shop windows, and even pulled through the streets on mobile publicity carts,” said Chapin. “These posters were the object of intense fascination, and the term affichomanie (poster mania) was invented to describe the craze. Paris would not have been Paris without them.”
Posters were so popular that collectors stole them from billboards almost as soon as they were pasted up. New markets emerged to meet the demand; posters were both collectors’ items and fashionable home décor. Print dealers started to sell posters and publishers offered subscriptions to portfolios with the most popular images of the day in more manageable, reduced sizes. Posters that found their way into private homes eventually entered the collections of museums all over the world.
In addition to the dazzling posters, the exhibition includes rare preparatory studies and maquettes that show how artists developed their designs from the drawing board to the final lithographic poster.
Posters of Paris: Toulouse-Lautrec and His Contemporaries will be on view from June 1–September 9.
Jules Chéret, (French, 1836–1932), La Comédie, 1891. Color lithograph. Collection of Jim and Sue Wiechmann. Photo by John R. Glembin.
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