Paris and posters

                   

Here's a page from my sketchbook, revisited with the odds and ends that always find their way into my pockets.

These Colonnes Morris—part of the Parisian landscape since the mid-1800's—are advertising pillars originally built to combat rampant advertising and graffiti. Some of them contain telephones and automatic public toilets.  And sometimes—startlingly— they serve as a broom cupboard for street cleaners.

Here's a Colonne Morris (seen from my local café on Fontaine Saint Michel)—also doubles as as hat!)

But most of all, they are adorned with beautiful posters: only those advertising cultural events (films, concerts, theatre, etc) are permitted. With such a steady stream of work (some of it publically funded) and abundant places to display it in, the flowering of French poster art was the inevitable result.  From Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha, to A.M. Cassandre and Raymond Savignac and Hervé Morvan, not to mention André François, Nathan-Garamond and Jean-Michel Folon —they all contributed to the rich visual feast on the streets here.

Newer practitioners you may want to look at:

• Michel Batory (who had a retrospective at Musée des Arts Decoratifs recently)
• The fabulous Zeloot (and much more here)
• Michel Quarez (and here)

In general:

• French posters: a huge collection organized by era (don't miss the ones after World War II...)
• Chaumont: International Poster Festival 
• And further afield: there's the International Poster Bienale, at the Poster Museum in Wilanow, Poland (which is held in June of even-numbered years).

Road trip, anyone?