I wanted to write a blog post about elections and election posters without resorting to mentioning Trump and some recently leaked video about what Amy Schumer calls ‘lady parts’. (Well, I think both Trump and Ms. Schumer are more precise, but I’m a little old fashioned … still…) And today, October 16, 2016, just a few days after Bob Dylan was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature (?!), I happened to find this great –Milton Glaser/Dylan-inspired Bernie Sanders 2016 poster. Poster Karma!

Many articles, books and blogs have discussed the power of persuasion that political posters have – and have always had – on public opinion. Here at L’Affichiste when we show posters by Alphonse Willette, we mention that he was often referred to as one of France’s secret weapons in the propaganda war that accompanied WWI.

I prefer our Journée du Poilu to the 2016 anti-Clinton poster on the right. For me, a solid propaganda poster needs to have a clear message: Journée du Poilu = home, hearth, romance. I’m not entirely sure what The Teflon Con means…

Great political poster artists have to be able – like all poster artists – to not only grab and keep your attention, but to impart a message that is memorable. Whether it’s the anti-Facism de Gaulle poster (below left) or the WWI Canadian bond poster (below right) each work managed to imprint itself on the viewer’s visual memory (this at a time before leaked videos …)

There have been some great articles written about political posters, like this one or this one.

Certain poster images have become unforgettable talismans of long-forgotten wars fought in far-off lands. As the Imperial War Museum has written about the Remember Belgium poster (bottom right)

“Ellsworth Young was responsible for one of the best-known American posters of the First World War. Taking a title which first appeared in two British recruiting posters, Remember Belgium, the artist uses the alleged atrocities committed by Germans in 1914 to generate sympathy for the Belgians and thereby encourage Americans to invest in war savings. Young did his design in 1918, but little else is known about the artist. The US war loan schemes were very successful, and by the end of the First World War millions of such posters had been produced, many using the Statue of Liberty (which became the Liberty Loan logo, designed by Adolph Treidler) or Uncle Sam as a motif. Such campaigns were even more effective than those launched in Germany (Joseph Pennell’s design of New York in flames, created for the Fourth Liberty Loan, was particularly successful). The message of Young’s Remember Belgium is simple, and its image clear and horrifying. Interesting is the resemblance between the German soldier and Otto Von Bismarck, whose appearance the artist would have known from illustrations. Also interesting is the large amount of plain green background (actually composed of green and blue, with small orange flecks), and the use of diagonals, indicating how effective Ellsworth Young was as a designer.”

As for me, I must say that I’ve found watching the US election to be an exhausting and rather unpleasant experience. Or as this Bernie Sanders (pseudo) campaign poster puts it…

Perhaps the most famous poster by Toulouse-Lautrec: La Goulue

Our very own Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is set to launch an exhibition devoted to the works of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (you can find more information about the exhibition here).

Toulouse-Lautrec, a man described by Cora Michael of the Metropolitan Museum in New York as “an aristocratic, alcoholic dwarf known for his louche lifestyle … created art that was inseparable from his legendary life.” Sounds like just the kind of guy to invite to a party. (I’ve written about this artist before: you can find my previous blog post here.)

Michael continues, “His career lasted just over a decade and coincided with two major developments in late nineteenth-century Paris: the birth of modern printmaking and the explosion of nightlife culture. Lautrec’s posters promoted Montmartre entertainers as celebrities, and elevated the popular medium of the advertising lithograph to the realm of high art. His paintings of dancehall performers and prostitutes are personal and humanistic, revealing the sadness and humor hidden beneath rice powder and gaslights. Though he died tragically young (at age thirty-six) due to complications from alcoholism and syphilis, his influence was long-lasting. It is fair to say that without Lautrec, there would be no Andy Warhol.” (You can find Michael’s entire article here.)

A favorite muse of Toulouse-Lautrec: Jane Avril

Lautrec was a strange child, prone to a variety of illnesses (due in part to the fact that his parents were first cousins) and, because of two separate accidents in his teen years, his legs ceased to grow while his body did not. This resulted in in a normally proportioned upper body, but the short legs of a dwarf – he walked, painfully, with the aid of a cane. Shunned – and shunning – proper society, Toulouse-Lautrec spent a great deal of time in the bordellos and whorehouses of Paris, drawing their occupants and clients with an acerbic wit and a singular (and slightly skewed) view.

I fell in love with the work of Toulouse-Lautrec when I was a young girl: many of his early works featured horses, and like many fillettes, I loved anything equine. (Actually, I credit my attraction to these works with my first exposure to what would later become my abiding passion for posters.) Any of his works that feature horses indicate his appreciation not only for their beauty, but also for the way they moved. An exhibition poster we recently received, for a show held at the Palais de la Méditerranée in Paris in 1957, gracefully illustrates the artist’s skill and finesse.

The horses, heads back, ears pointed, regally split the crowd of carousers around them… it’s a small piece, and one which is often overlooked, but in this format is both striking and charming.

150 years before selfies, Toulouse-Lautrec was not shy about having his photo taken – these images were shot in 1892 and show that the artist had (at best) a warped sense of humor. We love him for that reason, as well as for the fact that although he created fewer than 40 posters in his lifetime, his work provided the framework and foundation for every poster artist who followed in his footsteps. If you’d like to learn more about his style, you can do so by clicking here, or by watching a full-length documentary devoted to his style.

Some of the Toulouse-Lautrec works in the L’Affichiste collection.

His work has been exhibited and celebrated at some of the finest museums in the world. The Museum of Modern Art in New York created this video to commemorate their show, the press is already lauding the MMFA exhibition, and there will no doubt be other, equally exciting shows in the years to come.

The team at L’Affichiste is excited by the fact that more Montrealers will come to realize what we already know: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters are singular, spectacular, and yes, for sale at the gallery and on-line at laffichiste.com.