International studio (45.1912)

The Psychology of the Poster

The psychology of the
POSTER
BY EARNEST ELMO CALKINS
Interest in the poster as a form of
art, apart from interest in it as a means of adver-
tising, has persisted with an occasional revival for
some twenty years.
Definite attention was attracted to it in this
country about twenty years ago by the then com-
mon practice in magazines of announcing each
month’s issue with an appropriate and in many
cases effective poster. This gave an opportunity
to artists with an instinct for this form of designing
to produce some rather good things.
The growing pressure upon the limited space at
the disposal of newsstands for displaying these
posters, and also, perhaps, the demands of poster
collectors who bought the posters from newsdeal-
ers as fast as they were issued, led publishers to
stop this method of advertising.
Meanwhile collectors and others, attracted by
these magazine posters, began to take note of this
sort of work as practiced abroad.
The poster as a means of advertis-
ing has existed for a longer time
upon the Continent than with us,
and is still used, in the sense in
which it is understood in this article,
more largely there than here.
Many collectors have kept up
with the progress of poster art until
now most of them can recognize at
sight the style of nearly every well-
known designer both here and
abroad, and are familiar with all
the better-known specimens of his
work.
Charles Matlack Price has sought
in “Posters” (G. W. Bricka, Pub-
lisher, New York, limited edition
250 copies) to produce a work that
is not so much an illustrated cata-
logue of posters as it is an attempt
to criticize the poster as a work of
advertising art, and especially to
lay down the principles upon which
successful posters have been and
may be constructed. In doing so
he has produced a very attractive
book and one which incidentally
proves a very good illustrated cata-
logue on account of the large num-
ber of reproductions, not only in

black-and-white, but also in a great many cases
in the original colors, of posters by various conti-
nental and American artists well known and
otherwise.
The first chapter outlines the principles upon
which poster designing is done, and then takes
up in succession such topics as French, German,
English, Italian and American posters, the work
of Edward Penfield in a chapter by itself, theat-
rical posters and magazine covers designed to do
the work of posters, and in so doing gives a very
interesting bird’s-eye view of the progress of
this kind of work.
It is not necessary to quarrel with the principles
that Mr. Price lays down, which are undoubtedly
well founded and would stand critical analysis, but
it may be well to point out that probably a great
many of the artists who successfully complied with
Mr. Price’s principles did so without any knowl-
edge of the principles themselves. Poster art, like
almost any kind of art, is due to instinct, an artis-
tic sense of rightness, which the artist himself will
find it hard to define.


A FRENCH POSTER OF 1894

BY PIERRE BONNARD

XLIX