| Library status: currently open during regularly scheduled hours. |
| Library status: currently open during regularly scheduled hours. |
Art Deco
Posters
Posters—History
Commercial art
Visual Communication
Visual Communication in Art
War posters
American Advertising Posters of the Nineteenth Century by 
American Art Deco by
This splendid book explores the indigenous tradition of Art Deco in America and, in over 500 illustrations, reveals the beauty and extent of the style as it was manifested here. Most of the important buildings, in all parts of the country, were embellished with strong Art Deco themes. William van Alen, Ely Jacques Kahn, and Joseph Urban, among others, created some of the most memorable architecture of the century: the Chrysler Building and Radio City Music Hall in New York; the Union Trust Building in Detroit; the Richfield Oil Building and the Pan-Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles. Furniture, whether in homes, offices, restaurants, or nightclubs, was revolutionized by Art Deco's modernist stylizations (including the uniquely American skyscraper motif), and American designers from Paul Theodore Frankl to Donald Deskey to Russel Wright to Walker von Nessen created sofas, screens, and dressing tables in the Art Deco spirit. On radios, book covers, fabrics, automobiles--the influence of Art Deco abounded.This beautifully produced volume brings American Art Deco to life with illustrations of objects ranging from cocktail shakers to the Trylon and Perisphere of the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Alastair Duncan, an internationally acknowledged authority on Art Deco and Art Nouveau, and author of many books on the subject, has written the definitive volume on the American interpretations of one of the most successful design styles of the century.
Art Deco by
Art Deco style was established on the ashes of a disappeared world, the one from before the First World War, and on the foundation stone of a world yet to become, opened to the most undisclosed promises. Forgetting herself in the whirl of Jazz Age and the euphoria of the "Années Folles", the Garçonne with her linear shape reflects the architectural style of Art Deco: to the rounded curves succeed the simple and plain androgynous straight line...Architecture, painting, furniture and sculpture, dissected by the author, proclaim the druthers for sharp lines and broken angles. Although ephemeral, this movement keeps on influencing contemporary design.
Art Deco, 1910-1939 by
This lavishly illustrated book brings together nearly 40 essays from leading experts in the field to discuss the phenomenon that was Art Deco.
Art Deco Graphics by 
Art Deco Style by
Characterized by geometric shapes, stylized natural forms and the use of luxuriuos materials Art Deco originated in France and spread quickly all over the globe during the 1930s. Interest in the style was revived in the 1960s, partly as a result of the work of Bevis Hillier who recalls his triumphs and mistakes in writing the first book on the subject and co-organizing the Minneapolis exhibition in 1971.
Art for All by
A beautifully illustrated survey of British transport poster design from the early 20th century. In 1908 London Underground began a comprehensive publicity program that became one of the most successful, adventurous, and best-sustained promotional operations ever attempted. The posters commissioned not only encouraged travel on the capital's burgeoning public transport system; they also helped to foster a civic identity for metropolitan London. The four national rail lines created in 1923, inspired by this example, created their own campaigns. This richly illustrated volume celebrates the designs, highlighting works that are among the triumphs of 20th-century poster art. Designed to accompany an exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art, Art for All features more than one hundred works executed for the Underground and the railways. The exhibition and catalogue will explore the evolution of transport posters in 20th-century Britain. It will feature the career of E. McKnight Kauffer, perhaps the greatest of these poster artists; the role of women designers; the printing techniques that brought the designs to life; and the strategies of display developed by the transport systems. Both a visual delight and a work of scholarship, Art for All pays tribute to these extraordinary exploits in public design.
The Encyclopedia of Art Deco by 
French Posters by
The French poster, born of a basic utilitarian purpose, has developed with age into an admired and collected art form. Vintage posters command high prices at auction and curators specialize in their restoration. The earliest art-worthy posters appeared on the streets of Paris designed by French-born artists such as Jules Chéret, who popularized poster art with his Maîtres de l'Affiche publication from 1895 to 1899, Paul Émile Berthon, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Other poster artists just as well known but hailing from other countries include Eugène Grasset from Switzerland, Alphonse Mucha from what is now the Czech Republic, and Marcello Dudovich from Italy. The Art Nouveau and Art Deco posters created before and after the turn of the 20th century advertised everything from soap to chocolate, bicycles to cars, coffee to cordials, department stores to nightclubs. They promoted the performing artists in the revues, theaters, and cancan lines that dominated nightlife in the City of Light. Travel, another common poster theme, featured modern ocean liners and airlines as well as terribly exotic destinations and European resorts. This book includes examples of the works of the most popular poster artists working in France from 1890 to the 1930s.
Iconography of Power by
Masters at visual propaganda, the Bolsheviks produced thousands of vivid and compelling posters after they seized power in October 1917. Intended for a semi-literate population that was accustomed to the rich visual legacy of the Russian autocracy and the Orthodox Church, political posters came to occupy a central place in the regime's effort to imprint itself on the hearts and minds of the people and to remold them into the new Soviet women and men. In this first sociological study of Soviet political posters, Victoria Bonnell analyzes the shifts that took place in the images, messages, styles, and functions of political art from 1917 to 1953. Everyone who lived in Russia after the October revolution had some familiarity with stock images of the male worker, the great communist leaders, the collective farm woman, the capitalist, and others. These were the new icons' standardized images that depicted Bolshevik heroes and their adversaries in accordance with a fixed pattern. Like other "invented traditions" of the modern age, iconographic images in propaganda art were relentlessly repeated, bringing together Bolshevik ideology and traditional mythologies of pre-Revolutionary Russia. Symbols and emblems featured in Soviet posters of the Civil War and the 1920s gave visual meaning to the Bolshevik worldview dominated by the concept of class. Beginning in the 1930s, visual propaganda became more prescriptive, providing models for the appearance, demeanor, and conduct of the new social types, both positive and negative. Political art also conveyed important messages about the sacred center of the regime which evolved during the 1930s from the celebration of the heroic proletariat to the deification of Stalin. Treating propaganda images as part of a particular visual language, Bonnell shows how people "read" them--relying on their habits of seeing and interpreting folk, religious, commercial, and political art (both before and after 1917) as well as the fine art traditions of Russia and the West. Drawing on monumental sculpture and holiday displays as well as posters, the study traces the way Soviet propaganda art shaped the mentality of the Russian people (the legacy is present even today) and was itself shaped by popular attitudes and assumptions. "Iconography of Power" includes posters dating from the final decades of the old regime to the death of Stalin, located by the author in Russian, American, and English libraries and archives. One hundred exceptionally striking posters are reproduced in the book, many of them never before published. Bonnell places these posters in a historical context and provides a provocative account of the evolution of the visual discourse on power in Soviet Russia.
Original Art Deco Designs by 
The Poster by
The Poster: Art, Advertising, Design, and Collecting, 1860s-1900s is a cultural history that situates the poster at the crossroads of art, design, advertising, and collecting. Though international in scope, the book focuses especially on France and England. Ruth E. Iskin argues that the avant-garde poster and the original art print played an important role in the development of a modernist language of art in the 1890s, as well as in the adaptation of art to an era of mass media. She moreover contends that this new form of visual communication fundamentally redefined relations between word and image: poster designers embedded words within the graphic, rather than using images to illustrate a text. Posters had to function as effective advertising in the hectic environment of the urban street. Even though initially commissioned as advertisements, they were soon coveted by collectors. Iskin introduces readers to the late nineteenth-century "iconophile"--a new type of collector/curator/archivist who discovered in poster collecting an ephemeral archaeology of modernity. Bridging the separation between the fields of art, design, advertising, and collecting, Iskin's insightful study proposes that the poster played a constitutive role in the modern culture of spectacle. This stunningly illustrated book will appeal to art historians and students of visual culture, as well as social and cultural history, media, design, and advertising.
The Poster in History by
Posters are found in public places all over the world. They are usually visually striking, designed to attract the attention of passers-by and entice them to purchase a particular product or service, make them aware of a political viewpoint, or attend a specific event. This remarkable study is an overview of posters throughout history, as well as a representative survey of mass culture from the time of the French Revolution to 2000. Over 450 posters are reproduced here, 250 in full color, selected for both their historical import and their beauty. Author Max Gallo's informative text recapitulates the social and political currents of the day and places each poster in its historical context. The book also includes an essay on the development of poster art by art critic Carlo Arturo Quintavelle. 200 color and 200 black-and-white illustrations.
Posters by
From band posters stapled to telephone poles to the advertisements hanging at bus shelters to the inspirational prints that adorn office walls, posters surround us everywhere--but do we know how they began? Telling the story of this ephemeral art form, Elizabeth E. Guffey reexamines the poster's roots in the nineteenth century and explores the relevance they still possess in the age of digital media. Even in our world of social media and electronic devices, she argues, few forms of graphic design can rival posters for sheer spatial presence, and they provide new opportunities to communicate across public spaces in cities around the globe. Guffey charts the rise of the poster from the revolutionary lithographs that papered nineteenth-century London and Paris to twentieth-century works of propaganda, advertising, pop culture, and protest. Examining contemporary examples, she discusses Palestinian martyr posters and West African posters that describe voodoo activities or Internet con men, stopping along the way to uncover a rich variety of posters from the Soviet Union, China, the United States, and more. Featuring 150 stunning images, this illuminating book delivers a fresh look at the poster and offers revealing insights into the designs and practices of our twenty-first-century world.
