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Posters (  )
Visit the gallery : intro - 1
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Lautrec’s posters left a major mark on the collective unconscious
and continue to inspire fascination today. Without them, who would remember
la Goulue, Jane Avril, Yvette Guilbert, May Belfort, May Milton, Caudieux
the humorist and many others today?
Lautrec was to enlighten the world for evermore on fleeting nightlife.
Far from limiting himself to the world of the stage show, Lautrec would
make posters for book covers, such as the “Babylone d’Allemagne”
(the German Babylon), for certain artists, as with Sescau’s photography,
or for the world of cycling as with “La chaîne Simpson”
(The Simpson chain). The indispensable element of each poster was that
it should have an impact.
Many important artists have devoted themselves to this technique. Let
us remember Daumier, Chéret and Steinlein, who used the same methods
for their paintings and posters. Lautrec knew how to innovate the poster,
with his sharp eye and sense of the synthetic along with his dazzling,
and above all inventive, technique. “Never again will we see the
marvel of the end of the last century, which saw the walls of Paris sparkling
with Lautrec’s posters”, states Thadée Natanson who
runs the “Revue Blanche” (White Review) with her brother.
The “Revue Blanche” and the “Mercure de France”
(Mercury of France) shared the task of making their newspapers a forum
for the avant-garde for the following ten years. This forum acted as a
springboard for Lautrec’s work and for many other artists. Already
interested in prints, Lautrec made the natural move towards posters, guided
by Pierre Bonnard whose poster “France Champagne”, 1891, had
met with recent success. “With Lautrec and his posters, we see art
taking to the streets”, declares Thadée Natanson.
The real phenomenon for the history of art lay in the public’s
infatuation with Lautrec’s posters: perhaps for the first time,
the public went straight in for an art form that was considered avant-garde.
A number of artists, critics and collectors had nothing but disgust for
Lautrec’s unusual compositions, with pictorial processes such as
their garish faces, deliberately distorted to be more expressive. The
“Moulin Rouge” poster was the first modern poster, a real
work of art that was sought after by collectors straight away, leading
them to go as far as tearing them from the walls they had been displayed
on. In “l’Oeuvre” (The Work) (1886) Zola shows young
painters insulting the Fine Arts Academy as a “worn, three colour
poster”, advertising the circus, has them crying out in admiration
on the rue de la Seine. Félix Fénéan, in the anarchist
review “Le père peinard” (The easy father), urges readers
to tear down Paris’ most beautiful posters to “get hold of
paintings more trendy than the juicy crusts of liquorice that are the
jubilation of arseholes of shame”.
A Chéret poster from the same period seems too conventional next
to Lautrec’s shocking compositions. With posters like “Moulin
Rouge” and “Divan Japonais” (Japanese sofa – also
a cabaret), we see a vision of modernity in art.
Lautrec arrives early in the morning to see his printers, Chaix, Ancourt
or the father Cotelle. He takes his jacket off, ties his apron and joins
in printing the first drafts, drawing new faces on the blocks with a remarkable
firmness of strokes, and finding startling short-cuts with his compact,
elliptical manner of depicting a moving scene. This shows incredible physical
resistance from a man who, despite excessive alcohol consumption, possessed
a steadiness of hand that he would keep until his dying day.
Lautrec always went about his work in the same way; “it’s
about tekneeck” he would say jokingly. He started off with a preparatory
charcoal drawing and painted in roughly with very diluted paints, giving
more of a watercolour effect. Then came the move to printing blocks.
Example of three stages for the “Caudieux”
poster : 
From his very first posters, Lautrec innovates. He reduces his colour
spectrum to yellow, red, blue and black. Lautrec’s blacks are extraordinary.
What’s more, he uses them to create the basis of his posters, which
summarize his art. He gets particularly deep olive greens from expert
ink mixers, which he uses a great deal for lettering. Lautrec also uses
a technique used by many poster designers: spraying. It involves making
a fine shower of ink by running a knife over an inky toothbrush. A great
admirer of masters in the Japanese print, Lautrec had noticed from their
works that it was possible to obtain “equally striking results by
juxtaposing simple colours, as you would by superposing numerous colours.”
He also moves towards Japanese art with drawings that seem to flow spontaneously,
depicting each face with a vigorous pen stroke. In fact, for each poster
he creates, Lautrec tries out a number of different forms before finding
the perfect tones. Sometimes this only involves one draft, sometimes he
is only satisfied after 20 or more. Some of them are made with lettering,
that is to say with the poster’s definitive text, others are simply
to try out designs without text.
At times he changes the colour of the lettering, experimenting with the
background colour. Each poster demands an extraordinary amount of colour
research; the drawing and placing of the text must not be detrimental
to the composition. Lautrec understands perfectly that the poster is above
all meant to be a form of communication. A poster must grab people’s
attention with irresistible effects. He learns therefore to remove superfluous
details. Contours disappear replaced by solid background colours.
Lautrec died at the beginning of the 20th century, but the success of
his posters only grew stronger. It influenced every generation of creators
with that sharpness of mind and that sensitivity that these visionary
artists made their own.
By a strange coincidence, Lautrec’s death corresponds with the
1901 laws of non-profit making association. On the walls where his posters
once hung we now see the famous “no fly posting” sign!
Visit the gallery : intro - 1
- 2 - 3
- 4 - 5 |
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