SPEAKING OF PICTURES: A VINTAGE GRAPHICS BLOG

DOMESTICITY IN VINTAGE POSTER ART

Posted on July 10, 2018 by Jim Clark

http://www.idesirevintageposters.com/pochoir-le-nid-de-pinsons-1922-gbt.html

A pochoir tending to the home front comprises, for most people, an endless and fascinating endeavor. Thereby, when attracting a product, a graphic artist will often look to that scene for the means of winning over a customer to an attraction.

 

Those bare-bones of the matter actually, of course, afford myriad dramas and charms to delight not only the public but the artists themselves. (Family groups often bringing with them rich characteristics and dynamics wherever they go.)

Our first enticing instance shows so much in such a small range. The human figures telegraph hours of mutual affection and discovery. Their being  thus sensitive evokes admiration for not only their outlook but their apparel.   Continue reading →

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THE ROLE OF LANDSCAPE IN POCHOIR VINTAGE GRAPHICS  

Posted on June 24, 2018 by Jim Clark

http://www.idesirevintageposters.com/pochoir-manteau-de-fourrure-1924-gbt.html

Although we have been closely attending to pochoir art deco fashion plates for decades, it only occurred to us recently that a large percentage of those gems activate fascinating interplays between the very well-dressed figures and the equally very-notable landscape. The little cadre of big talents producing this unique gift was not content to flash chic folk in chic apparel on sale, with perfunctory attention to the surround. Being very bright, they were well aware that our surroundings were far more complex than the foliage of the Arts and Crafts rural moralists of the 19th century. Here were city slickers the slickness (and toughness) of which could plunge to a new mystery. Consequently, our first instance has to do with a manicured estate and manicured figures humbled by powers nearby. Continue reading →

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THE MEDITERRANEAN FACTOR IN VINTAGE POSTER ART

Posted on May 8, 2018 by Jim Clark

http://www.idesirevintageposters.com/travel-les-poissons-volants-c.1950.html

The extraordinary beauty and mystery of the various shores and skies of the Mediterranean Sea become, in the Golden Age of lithographic poster art, portrayals serving the dawning of the Age of Consumerism. When you consider the transactions involved in the evocation, one thing becomes remarkable—most of the experience is very short-term tourism. As a result, the presentations constitute remarkably intense seductions.

Another important consideration here, however, is, over and above the industry of quick fixes, the visitor who finds Mediterranean moments—including the natives—to last a lifetime. As we touch upon our poster resources, it would be useful to imagine which of the vignettes would reach far and which would reach less far.

Our first glimpse of the world’s most famous sea, finds it upstaged by an example of maritime speed and the agents who can put you aboard and perhaps sell you one. Perhaps the main connection to the Cote d’Azure is the craft’s being able to cover the region in an afternoon. “Ultra-Rapide,” yes. Ultra-lasting, doubtful.   Continue reading →

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CATS AND DOGS (ON A PROMOTIONAL TEAR) IN VINTAGE GRAPHICS AND POSTERS 

Posted on April 9, 2018 by Jim Clark

First of all, the fact that cats and dogs carry a mystique that never ends translates into getting on the good side of prospective customers in the area of graphic art. Their grace and verve install them as powerful sights for sore eyes, and marketing machinations make hay accordingly. But, moreover, their special function as pets places us before them as family members, often in better standing than most of the two-legged relatives. Let’s see how these natural resources end up in the vast, the unique and the extinct Roman Candles known as vintage posters and vintage lithographs.

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“AMERICA, AMERICA!” AS SEEN BY VINTAGE GRAPHIC POSTERS  (PART TWO)

Posted on March 21, 2018 by Jim Clark

http://www.idesirevintageposters.com/entertainment-nomads-of-the-north-c1920.html

Complementing the hyperactive campaign of American life, there is a vigorous endeavor to demonstrate that the US is not only the wildest, but also the most democratically refined place the world has ever seen. Though this, mythos involves as many holes of a Swiss cheese, there is enough evidence of widespread solicitude to sustain the paradox of rampaging gentility.

The premium upon Olympian foot-on-the-floor, tends to cherish the fit and the multi-tasking. Our first vintage graphic design along this tangent demonstrates fastidiousness about the needy, along with Calamity Jane risk.

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“AMERICA, AMERICA!” AS SEEN BY VINTAGE POSTERS  (PART ONE)

Posted on March 11, 2018 by Jim Clark

 

http://www.idesirevintageposters.com/transportation-hawaii-by-clipper-pan-american-world-airways-1948.html

Love it or hate it, America is a big story on this little planet! Graphic designers know that its non-stop show-time flicks out a special pop we can’t stop watching. In our two-part coverage of this extravaganza we’ll try to indicate the quality of vigor attaching to American life and how it has become a gold mine for graphic artists.

We begin with a vignette showing offshore resources from which Americans were not slow to consult, in the process of obviating their Puritan beginnings. A chic vehicle in the distance and an earthy performance in the forefront set in relief the poetic imperatives having become a must for a long time.

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IN TIME FOR THE OLYMPIC GAMES: HOW SPORTS FIT IN, AS SEEN BY VINTAGE GRAPHIC ART

Posted on February 8, 2018 by Jim Clark

http://www.idesirevintageposters.com/small-format-gems-up-and-over-c.1940.html

There are many sports moments for fun and many sports crescendos for profit. What could be more mainstream and easy to understand?

Actually, when you take a steady look at these phenomena, they get surprisingly complicated! For every activity of this kind there is a field of fun or for the sake of health and, on the other hand, a profit centre (which would not be without its dimension of fun). Perhaps, then, the most fascinating aspect of this world-wide mania is the wide range of motives it encompasses, and thereby the varied payoffs from the point of view of fans. (Win, at all cost, for civic pride; or evoke youthful graces; or a bit of both.)

“Up and Over,” then, becomes an apt opening inasmuch as it affords a quite simple, intimate factor within a maelstrom of dizzying cross-purposes. With neither friends, loved-ones, paying spectators (and, presumably, no priority of training for eventually making a splash with fan base) to get in the way, our fair lady delivers sheer dynamics, and the dashing beast increases the investment in something not on the order of mainstream life.  Continue reading →

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BOATS, BUILDINGS AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN VINTAGE GRAPHIC ART

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Jim Clark

http://www.idesirevintageposters.com/transportation-les-poissons-volants-c.1950.html

The other day, we attended a design show where two of the speakers were Jay Osgerby, from London, and Alex Mustonen, from Brooklyn. Osgerby’s account of the erudition, planning and energy as to materials, functions and composition was a great lift inasmuch as such commitment surfaces in our midst. Mustonen’s audacious synthesis of architecture and art brings our way almost cinematic points of departure and moments of truth.

Vintage poster art testifies to such endeavors we can’t afford to ignore. That hydrofoil at the Cote d’Azure, in our first instance, was first cooked up by telephone-inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, in his think-tank on Cape Breton Island, in the era of the first world war. Thus we have a modernist boat graphic, but, beyond that, the breakthrough component of our title!

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HIDEAWAYS AS SEEN BY VINTAGE GRAPHIC ART

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Jim Clark

http://www.idesirevintageposters.com/artistic-magazines-vogue-april-15-1936.html

In the world of vintage posters and graphics there comes to pass an enticement seldom addressed directly. When seduction accruing to products and services is closely scanned, we are struck by the frequency of large-scale abandonment of the busy and, perhaps, disastrously careless, mainstream.

Today we’re looking at our collection with respect to currents chosen to elicit the elixir of withdrawing (briefly or long-term) from the way most people live. We commence in that vein with an instance of gardening involving deep seclusion from the cares of nearby household frazzle (here including a state of widespread economic Depression and a drive toward World War.

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AIMING FOR THE SKIES–PRACTICAL GIFTS WRAPPED IN VINTAGE GRAPHIC ART

Posted on January 6, 2018 by Jim Clark

 http://www.idesirevintageposters.com/fly-by-boac-stratoscruiser-1954.html

Modern life could be described as teeming with aspirants to deep and moving spaces while being picked off like quails. Millennial artists swear by falling to such a cull, tranquillized as they are by approval from an insular clientele and a wider world not nearly as impressed as they imagine.

We begin, for a change, by this roundabout gambit, because the graphic designs of our blog today stem from heights tempered by a gravity needing inclusion in its troubling omnipotence. So, here we go, showing folks with high hopes and the moxie to think things over.

A bit of a scramble; but years later an epiphany might open doors!

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