Poster World |
Poster world - what is it? What are posters good for? Well, that's
quite easy. For instance, you don't like the looks of your walls. You
want them to look very original and to have all your friends and
visitors understand right away what your tastes are. These large format
pictures are placed on the wall and turn some people's rooms into the
poster world. There are many kinds of posters you may consider having
on your walls: film posters with the portraits of your favorite movie
actors. In such a case you achieve several goals: firstly you have the
portraits of your favorite actors always within your sight. And you
can enjoy watching them day and night. Then, secondly, you show to your
friends and visitors that you are interested in movies and that you
love this and that film, that you like certain actors. This information
is very important for finding friends and people who think and feel
in the similar way.
There is another very large category of posters in the so called poster
world. These are celebrity posters. Well, everything mentioned above
refers to them too. They also help you be original, they tell your
friends a lot about your beliefs, your preferences and your tastes.
They make your room look really stylish and outstanding.
And, if we are talking about the categories of posters we cannot do
without mentioning music posters. These are the pictures showing your
favorite singers and groups, telling everybody what kind of music you
are enjoying, who your favorite singers and groups are, and again:
having these in your room is very stylish.
But, certainly, the poster world is somewhat younger than the Earth,
isn't it? Well, how did these large printed pieces of paper appear? Who
has invented them? Were they always meant to decorate our
rooms? Who was depicted in the first posters? Well, let's address the history.
One of french historians Max Gallo posters have been attracting our
attention for more than two centuries already. Firstly they were
designed to attract the attention of the people in the street, mainly with an advertising purpose. They were there in order to
persuade us to follow some political doctrines, to make us vote for a
particular person or a party, they were telling us about certain events
and trying to make us attend them, trying to attract us with their
beauty and original design. They would also encourage us to buy certain
goods or to subscribe to a certain service.
The posters, to seeing which we are used in our time have first been
produced as early as the year of 1827, when the perfected color
lithography made it possible to produce these products in big
quantities.
In more ancient times people were also used to seeing posters in the
streets of their cities. Those, more old posters contained text only.
Such posters had only informative function. They were to inform the
people about government proclamations or, in the best case scenario,
about plays at local theaters.
The progress in the posters world was caused by the invention of
lithography in 1796. It was invented by Alois Senefelder from Germany
and soon after that chromolithography. This allowed the mass production
of illustrated posters.
By the end of the nineteenth century such colorful posters spread all
over Europe, and many famous artists joined this art wave. Among them
were Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Jules Chéret. The latter,
by
the way, is called "advertisement placards". He himself was a scene
decorator, but in the second part of the century, namely - in 1866 he
started a little lithography office in french capital, and produced
over a thousand advertising posters. Those mainly advertised various
events and goods. He invented several revolutionary techniques in the
posters, made them more expressive and, this is very important, was the
first one to introduce the image of women to the public, as an
advertising ploy.
Soon, and mainly due to his posters the streets and avenues of Paris
were turned out into real open air art galleries. In the year 1884 in
Paris the first exhibition of posters was held. This illustrates, how
popular posters had become by then.
In the United States of America posters did not achieve the same
artistic level. They were mainly designed for advertising purposes.
Unfortunately, it's hard to talk about any artistic creativity in
connection with these, of very middle quality posters.
Well, this is the story of the posters world in short. This is how
they happened to come to our rooms and become real pieces of art,
making a regular wall into a small gallery. |
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