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.
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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?
