{ Early Poster Production & History }

In the nineteenth century, posters were made through a process called stone lithography. The method was used by printers throughout the nineteenth century, but it wasn't until the end of the century that artist Jules Cherét developed multi-color lithography, which gave birth to the affiche artistique (artistic poster).

Stone lithography begins with a large slab of limestone. The artist draws a poster design directly onto a slab of limestone using a grease crayon. Once the design has been drawn, the stone is treated with an acid bath, which eats away a small layer of stone everywhere that hasn't been greased. Next, the stone is affixed to a press, inked and the paper is printed. Cherét expanded on this, using three separate stones with three separate colors (blue, red and yellow). This process required very exacting production and resulted in a great deal of mistakes and waste when things didn't line up perfectly.

Once a run of posters was produced, the limestone used would be sanded down, and re-used for the next poster design. This had the inadvertent result of destroying the printing plate, making a second printing run impossible. This is why posters are considered "original".

In other forms of fine art printing, an artist makes a "limited edition print" from a plate used for printing. That plate survives and allows for a second or third edition to be re-printed and more to be sold. With original stone-lithograph posters, the plate is the limestone that is destroyed after printing, so making a second edition of a poster is impossible.

Posters were outdoor advertisement, effectively the first billboards. They were made to be glued to a wall for no more than two weeks, only to be torn down and replaced by the next poster. Because they were so ephemeral, printers would use the cheapest possible paper, very comparable to newsprint. The number of posters printed is generally unknown, but we do know that very few of them survive today. Early posters weren't made to last at all. In fact, the only reason any posters survive today is because they were collected and appreciated when they were made. Poster mania (affichomanie) swept Paris in the 1890's. It was a time when poster collecting became all the rage. We have these early poster collectors to thank for the posters that survive today.

Because of consumer demand to collect posters, printing firms in the 1890's would intentionally overprint certain posters in order to sell extras to art galleries and collectors. These posters were collected, exhibited, traded and sold through the decades. They make up the lion's share of what is available today. Beyond these, extremely small numbers of posters have been found in old printing firms. Posters which were saved or never were sent out to hang on the streets. Some posters that were hung inside shop windows may survive today as well, but the vast majority of today's surviving posters were collected as high art from their inception.

{ The Belle Époque and Affichomanie }

France: 1890 - 1914: Political and economic stability help lead to a golden age across western Europe, and especially France. The "naugty nineties" were an era that saw major innovations in technology, industry, and culture. In Paris, the middle class was growing in size. Parisians generally had more disposable income, freedom, and time to do what they liked. Many Parisians ate the majority of their meals at a café and found time to take in shows at the local cabaret and absinthe at a bar regularly.

At the same time, the Paris cityscape was evolving. Under orders from Louis Napoléon III, grand boulevards were constructed in grids, making it much easier to move about the city. These boulevards opened up the streets for kiosks, urinals, and "Morris Columns" to display posters. Shop windows would be adorned with posters advertising the newest wares, and people could amble about freely gazing upon the confluence of posters. The addition of public spaces; parks, theatres, cafés, etc. all gave Parisians places to amble and products to purchase.

Among several new innovations, two developments came about nearly simultaneously and benefited each other greatly: the color lithograph, and the safety cycle.

The development of the pneumatic tire by John Dunlop and others made it possible to build bicycles with the same size wheels. They were more comfortable and could handle the imperfections of nineteenth century streets. As more and more traditional bicycles were being produced, consumer demand quickly grew. Faster than walking and cheaper than a horse, bicycles quickly became an ideal mode of transportation around cities.

At the same time, Jules Cherét was developing the multi-color lithograph. The method was ideal for large scale advertisement on city streets. In the 1890s, Paris was covered in posters. They were glued up to walls of buildings, on morris columns, kiosks, urinals, and even carried on carts around city streets. A Parisian walking a few blocks from their home to a neighborhood café would see hundreds of posters along their way. Posters would make a collage of murals across the city.

Fortunately, the French aesthetic sensibility meant that many posters were artistic and exceedingly beautiful. At this point, there was no established physiology of advertising, and most advertisers wanted the most beautiful (if not direct) posters possible. This in effect created an outdoor public art gallery right in the streets of Paris.

The French public embraced the affiche artistique (artistic poster) with open arms. They were critiqued and exhibited in salons, and collected and sold in art galleries. Posters were more accessible to the public than art had ever been. They were viewable everywhere, their artistic expression was straightforward, and there were hundreds of them on display at any given time. A collector could buy most posters from an art gallery at a price similar to dinner at a café or a show at the cabaret.

The accessibility and popularity of artistic posters created a poster craze, dubbed Affichomanie in the 1890s. Posters were ferociously collected, critiqued, and admired. Collectors would host poster parties, showing off the latest designs and acquisitions. Galleries and salons would host exhibitions. Magazines would copy and distribute the most popular designs. Many printers caught on and would intentionally over-run particular poster designs to sell to galleries and poster collectors. This aspect is what provides the majority of posters that survive today.

The bicycle poster was a happy byproduct of the time. The bicycle and the artistic poster were born and largely developed simultaneously, and it was only natural that they would find an elegant marriage. Nearly all of the best artists designed posters for bicycle companies. One of the largest printing firms in Paris, Chaix, was located next door to the huge Clément bicycle factory. From Alphonse Mucha's art nouveau mastery in Cycles Perfecta to Leonetto Cappiello's groundbreaking modernist Pneu Russian, cycle posters spanned all the major styles, and would typify many artists' best production.

Affichomanie spanned a glorious two decades of poster production. As printing methods developed, new styles emerged and popularized. Poster collecting dwindled little after 1910, and declined dramatically by the beginning of World War I. Luckily, many early poster collectors and printing firms preserved their collections well, aiding in their survival through both world wars, and continuing into today's art market. Although the poster craze largely ended by 1915, posters were still produced and collected through the subsequent ages on a smaller scale.