Bringing Colour to the Streets of Paris

An advertising poster, you might think, is completely ephemeral -- just a sheet of paper that's here today, gone tomorrow, fading in the wind and rain and then pasted over by a newer, fresher advert. The most successful advertising, though, is anything but ephemeral. How many of those television commercials from your childhood still resonate today, for example? And as the advertising poster came into its own in late 19th-century Paris, it produced some of the most striking images in French art -- and became a collector's item in its own right.  

Now those posters can be seen en masse at the Musée d'Orsay in Art Is in the Street, a fun if somewhat bloated exhibition that gives due credit to the masters of the art: not just Alfons Mucha, Pierre Bonnard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, though they're here too, but also many others you've perhaps never heard of. This is a show that neatly brings together art and social history, often a winning formula in our eyes. 

And the really big name to conjure with in the world of the French poster is Jules Chéret, who'd trained as a draughtsman and in lithography, a process for printing a flat design from a stone. Large-format colour posters had been around since the 1840s, but it was Chéret who in the mid-1860s was able to further develop a process previously used to print in monochrome, creating the first multi-colour lithograph posters.

Thus bringing a new look to the streets of Paris, a city then modernising rapidly. "Like society, the street has been transformed," the art critic Roger Marx wrote at the time. 

Here's a typical 1890s Chéret, for the then newish Olympia music hall, full of bold, bright colours and featuring a joyful, very scantily clad young woman.

Oh la la. This sort of sexualised figure was such a recurring element in Chéret's work that she became known as a chérette.

You could get away with a poster as daring as this, partly because France abolished censorship in 1881. Nevertheless, the police and judicial authorities still went after some images they perceived as too racy, such as this one for a literary journal, which bears the inscription in red: "This part of the drawing has been banned."

That must have the guaranteed the sale of a few more copies of Fin de siècle....
 
Posters have always divided opinion -- not just because of their content, but because of their effect on the urban environment, not that they would have used that term in the late 19th century. And while enthusiasts welcomed the colour and life they brought to the street, critics thought they made the city look cluttered, a form of visual pollution. 

Roger Marx noted how posters created "a museum formed by chance, where the brilliant collides with the mediocre," but also how "the poster has the precarious fate of all that glitters.... it glistens in the sun, fades through the mists, and its shreds dangle sadly, swayed by the chill wind."  

Less need to worry, though, about the weather damage to posters in the ultramodern Metro system. One painting in the exhibition by Edouard Vuillard shows how the walls of stations underground were also covered with posters (and of course they still are). However, his picture suggests it was rather dark on the platforms, perhaps a little too dim to give maximum effect to the products being advertised; still, nothing like a captive audience (and no mobile phones to distract them). 

Other artists followed Chéret in incorporating bubbly young women in their posters, even if they reinterpreted the theme in their own fashion. Such as Pierre Bonnard for, naturally, bottles of bubbly.  

This is a very modern image for the start of the 1890s, with its flat areas of colour and the foaming champagne clearly influenced by Japanese prints. A Great Wave of fizz, surely. 

But advertising wasn't just aimed at the grown-up consumer; as we saw in the excellent exhibition on late 19th-century art and shopping last year in Caen, manufacturers and retailers were quick to target the young, whom they hoped would nag their parents till they gave in and bought them what they wanted.

This cute little girl is making sure you can't miss the product she is promoting: It's in her basket, in her left hand and in the writing on the wall. The poster for Menier chocolate is by Firmin Bouisset, who seems to have made a speciality of the genre of the small child with a sweet tooth, also creating the image of a schoolboy with a basket of LU biscuits. 

The theatre and nightlife were fields ripe for the poster artist. That most iconic actress on the stage, Sarah Bernhardt, called on the Czech, Alfons Mucha, to create iconic stylised renderings of her in her star roles -- here as Medea, the wronged heroine of Greek tragedy avenging herself through murder. A blood-soaked dagger sums up the story.   

It's all about the Sarah Bernhardt image. The author, Euripides, doesn't get a look-in, you'll notice. But as he'd been dead for well over 2,000 years, neither he nor his agent were in a position to complain.

But if we're going to apply that much abused word iconic to any posters in this exhibition, it surely has to be those by Toulouse-Lautrec, perhaps the greatest exponent of the art, able to condense the image to a few key elements. Such as this one of the cabaret performer and nightspot owner Aristide Bruant, instantly recognisable in his red scarf, black hat and cape.    

And that was the goal: instant impact. You could spot Bruant on a poster from some way away, without even seeing the text. Toulouse-Lautrec's first poster was perhaps his most famous: for the Moulin Rouge, with the dancers La Goulue and the "boneless" Valentin le Désossé.

Now, you can have too much of a good thing. This exhibition was another giant offering from the Musée d'Orsay, with nearly 230 works. Our interest flagged towards the end in the last of the six extensive sections, the one dealing with political posters, which demanded a rather fuller interest in French history than we could give. Overall, this is a very enjoyable show; the danger is that if you look at everything in minute detail, you'll be in there for hours, without even a packet of LU biscuits to sustain you. 

And while you're in the Musée d'Orsay....

Also on in until July 27 is Christian Krohg (1852-1925), the first ever exhibition outside Scandinavia of this Norwegian painter who campaigned against social injustice. 

Struggle for Existence is a particularly eye-catching work, and there are some interesting paintings that show the influence of Gustave Caillebotte, but we have to say we weren't too enthralled by a lot of his pictures, depicting scenes of sailors in peril or small children. 

Practicalities

Art Is in the Street is on at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris until July 6. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday from 0930 to 1800, with late opening on Thursday until 2145. To minimise waiting times, it's always a good idea at the Musée d'Orsay to book an advance ticket with an entrance timeslot, which you can do here. Full-price tickets to the permanent collection and all exhibitions are 16 euros online, but it's only 12 euros after 1800 on Thursdays and free on the first Sunday of the month. We spent close on two hours in this show. 

The Musée d'Orsay is on the south bank of the River Seine, just across from the Tuileries gardens and the Louvre, and it has its own station on line C of the RER suburban-rail network. Solférino station on line 12 of the Metro is also close by.

Images

Jules Chéret (1836-1932) & Imprimerie Chaix, Paris, Olympia, 1892, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Photo: BnF
Alfred Choubrac (1853-1902) & Imprimerie François Appel, Paris, Cette partie du dessin a été interdite, 1891, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Louis-Robert Carrier-Belleuse (1848-1913), The Tinsmith, 1882, Private collection. Photo: Studio Redivivus
Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) & Imprimerie Edward Ancourt, Paris, France-Champagne, 1891, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris 

Firmin Bouisset (1859-1925) & Imprimerie Camis, Paris, Chocolat Menier, 1893, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

Alfons Mucha (1860-1939) & Imprimerie Ferdinand Champenois, Paris, Médée, Théâtre de La Renaissance, Sarah Bernhardt, 1898, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Photo: BnF
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) & Imprimerie Edward Ancourt, Ambassadeurs, Aristide Bruant dans son cabaret, 1892, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Photo: BnF
Christian Krohg (1852-1925), Struggle for Existence, 1889, Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo. Photo: Nasjonalmuseet/Børre Høstland