"Postermania. French advertising of the late XIX - early XX centuries from the collection of the Pushkin Museum. AS Pushkin"

State Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin presents an exhibition of French advertisements of the late XIX - early XX century "Afishemaniya". The exhibition will display 130 posters from the museum’s collection, which will introduce the history of the birth and evolution of the poster as a form of art. Viewers will see the works of famous artists and masters of pictorial advertising - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alfons Mucha, Paul Gavarni, Leon Schubrack, Jules Cheret, Adolphe Wyatt and other authors.

As part of the artistic process, the poster reflects various trends in art, illustrating their inherent features and the individual style of each. Thanks to the posters from the collection of the Pushkin Museum to them. A.S. Pushkin can trace the history of art of an era in France - Belle Époque. In addition, 19th-century art advertising is documentary evidence of its time. Responding to the main events of the century, the poster reflected the nature of various political parties, served as the mouthpiece of the ideas of socialists and anarchists, played a huge role in the fate and career of individual politicians and government officials, and demonstrated the achievements of science and technology. She expanded the space of the cultural environment, turning the streets of European cities into exhibition halls. Performing its main function - commercial advertising of goods and services - the poster was a field for the experimental search for new forms in art, a conductor of advanced ideas, had a serious impact on the development and spread of art styles - Art Nouveau and Art Deco, and largely determined the aesthetics of the era.

In 1889, Henri Beraldi, the graphic art collector and author of a reference book about 19th-century French engravers, first included advertising graphics in his work. This was the first authoritative recognition of illustrated advertising as an art form. In his introduction, Beraldi wrote that “of all types of modern graphics, it’s the poster that gives so much joy and anxiety to a true lover today” and that “cataloging the poster is as important as any type of engraving.”

“Poster Mania” - such a diagnosis was aptly put to the public by publicist and writer Octav Yuzann, describing her symptoms in an article about collecting posters in a magazine devoted to the review of book novelties. Since the works of Jules Sheret, Adolphe Wyatt and the Shubrak brothers appeared on the streets of Paris in the late 1860s - 1870s, lovers of posters joined the gambling hunt of engraving collectors, who constituted an army by the end of the 19th century. Everything was decidedly subject to this passion, regardless of age and occupation: both owners of an unpretentious taste, and snobs. In the history of art, it is difficult to find a similar example of a universal enthusiasm for collecting, such as the collecting of lithographic "icons of the new time".

Artists who raised advertising to the level of a work of art provoked unprecedented public interest and provided the poster with the role of the main object in the art market of that time. Afishaniya entailed a series of crimes. In the 1890s, the French press covered in detail the lawsuits about buying up and concealing circulations of posters for artificially inflating prices, exposed the collusion of merchants and collectors with advertisers in advertisements, discussed nightly embezzlement in publishing houses, speculation and, finally, the banal theft of posters from the walls. The customer of the advertising of Mexican Chocolate, who paid for the entire issue, publicly accused the publisher of fraudulent print runs, reproached the insufficient placement of posters Eugene Grasse on the streets and the presence of a large number of them among print dealers.

The recognition of illustrated advertising as an art of the noble and worthy halls of the Paris Salon was confirmed by the success of exhibition projects. In 1889, at the World Exhibition, which demonstrated the world achievements of science, technology and culture, French art along with painting was presented by a lithographed poster. The exhibition was open from May to November and was perceived by visitors as a demonstration of the historical development and evolution of a new genre in art. Samples of applied graphics here sounded like works of art, marked by a variety of author’s handwriting and artistic originality.

In Russia, collecting posters in the nineteenth century was not widespread. Enthusiastically, art advertising was collected by two Moscow collectors - the famous connoisseur of engraving Pavel Ettinger and the representative of Russian business Fedor Fedorov. Thanks to them today the Pushkin Museum to them. A.S. Pushkin has one of the largest collections of French lithographed posters in Russia. It includes the work of artists of the second half of the XIX and early XX centuries, whose work glorified the genre of commercial advertising. These are the pioneers of lithographed ads with illustrations for bookcases of bookstores Paul Gavarni and Leon Schubrack, the creator of the poster art genre Jules Scheret, representatives of the Art Nouveau style Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Eugene Grasse and Alfons Mucha, cartoonists Adolphe Wijette and Gustave Josso. The works of these masters will be presented at the exhibition in seven sections, reflecting various topics and aspects of the poster art: “Walls, fences, shop windows”, “Street painting”, “Cabaret, theater, exhibitions”, “Muses of commerce”, “Bicycles, airplanes, tires ”,“ Wine, tobacco, canned food ”,“ Style of the era: Art Nouveau ”.