Cheret lithographic posters and Art Nouveau
Although lithography was invented in 1798, it was at first too slow and expensive forposter production. Most posters were woodblocks or metal engravings with little color ordesign. This all changed with Cheret's "three stone lithographic process," a breakthroughwhich allowed artists to achieve every color in the spectrum with as little as three stones -red, yellow and blue - printed in careful registration. Although the process was difficult, the result was a remarkable intensity of colorand texture, with sublime transparencies and nuances impossible in other media (even tothis day). This ability to combine word and image in such an attractive and economical
Classic posters, are examples of great advertising, combining esthetics with directcommunication resulting in a message with resonance. finally made the lithographic poster a powerful innovation. To reach thepeople they had to be loud, colorful, easy to read and easy to understand. They were becoming readers, theater goers,music and art lovers. It seems as though the French developed a keener sense of art andstyle, ahead of everyone else. This new consumer-oriented economy created a need for a medium to reach themasses of people with product information. His innovations with color and shading produced images that convey their message in amatter of seconds while still proving interesting more than one hundred years later withcomplex and subtle color harmonies. In France especially, as the industrial age grew, the average person had more timefor themselves. Paris became the center for culture and artistic excellence,during this period These were changing times. So for agood number of them, the border between advertising medium and work of fine artbecomes very blurred. Jules Cheret pioneered color lithography as an economical means of advertising. One of the main reason posters are so valuable, is because they show the changesin society, as well as the society itself. Starting in the 1870sin Paris, it became the dominant means of mass communication in the rapidly growingcities of Europe and America.
Common topics in this essay:
Jules Cheret,
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America France,
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