Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-10-01
AMERICAN WAR POSTERS
Possibilities OF the Medium of Art Expression Recently Re-
riued to Help Loans, Shipbuiding and the Red Cross
By BART HALEY


THE making Of a great poster is from
the begil.ninG to the end a task OF
elimination. The completed work should
be a shout filed with meaning and ade.
quate to attract attention above all else in
its environment. 1t should be an idea re-
duced to its elements and. if possible. nobly
pictured. There have been schools of post
ermaking that tended to bewildering
masses of beautiful decoration, to fantasy
and to involved design and %coloring. Mucha.
who flourished in Paris twenty years ago,
was the leader of that fashion. But he
did not succeed in changing the basic con-
victions of the rank and file of poster men,
who never have departed far from a quest
after the sort Of explicitness and simplicity
that is best represented in the older
japanese prints.
In France and in England, where posters
have had n consistent vogue for a genera.
ton, many artists have shown that sub
tlety and tenderness may be reflected in a
few lines or in simple masses. A painter
will paint his subject as he sees it. The
poster man will consider that same subject
for its essential lines and masses, and, like
a mural painter, will render these masses
always with a view to making them effec-
tive in relation to the border lines Of his
composition. The completed work should
need no explanation. 1t should he palmer
than words, whether it aims at the sugges.
ton of terror or fantasy. One who OBJ
serves a group of workmen, say, will not be
aware Of the buttons and buttonholes in the
picture as he recalls it. He will see in re.
Prospect only the ma jor lines, the masses of
shadow. the light on a hand. This is the
aspect which a postermaker tries to get
into black and white or color.
TT WILL be apparent. therefore, that
l. while there is much good work in the
present crop OF Liberty Loan posters. much
that is appealing and valuable and even
imposing, there are few good posters.
Mr.. Raleigh, for instance, in his study of
the forlorn little girl with the infant
crushed TO her breast, has not made a
poster. He has done something more or
less according to your point of view. In
the sensitive profile of that little child's
face he has pictured neither terror nor
fright, but something more subtle-the dis.
belief and the half-sensed horror that would
affiict a child under the circumstances
which he has suggested in the rest of the
drawing. He has sounded the cello note
that other ears in France have heard con.
stantly under the boom and crash of the
war.
But you have to listen to hear it, Were
Steinlen TO have seized upon the same
subject for a poster, he, being one of the
few masters Of pure line and mass alive
would have made his whole picture ring
like a cry of desolation. There would have
been nothing to take the edge off the mean.
ing of the work. His meaning would have
stood out, challenging, solitary, without
any adornment.
Raleigh's drawing is full Of tenderness
and feeling. But 1t is the work of a man
accustomed to making Illustrations for PEG.
Pile who insist upon being shown all the
details in women's gowns and gentlemen's
gloves. The work Of the other poster
makers for the Liberty Loan Is similarly
hampered, more or less. Howard Chand.
Ter Cbristy's unbelievable Columbias-pale
enervated, bloodless and oyerdrawn-show
how deadly this Inhibition can be when II
takes deep and permanent root.