Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-10-01

AN EXTRAORDINARILY vivid exposi-
"A ton of one of the most difficult arts
was hardly to be expected as a by
product of war. Yet that interesting cul-
mination is upon us. The posters that
appear everywhere to advertise the Liberty
Loan and the Red Cross and the aspirations
OF the Emergency Fleet Corporation are
not merely advertisements. They represent
the full extent of the progress we have
made with one tremendously potent method
Of Interpretation.
Some of the posters are good. Some
aren't. The mass of the assembled work
contributed by American artists in this
field is likely TO have a permanent effect
on general taste. The poster may return
TO its old popularity. and if it does we shall
nave an additional grain of comfort when
the costs Of the war are summed up.
DISCRIMINATING is an art that was
L never greatly encouraged in America.
Consequently the posters now being used
so extensively by the Government and the
war organizations are obviously the work
of men accustomed to the restraints OF
| popular illustration. The Emergency Fleet
Corporation has distributed the best OF
| all the newer posters. This is the shipyard
picture made by Jonas Lie, a painter whose
| work is familiar to any one who Is in the
| habit Of attending the successive shows at
the Academy Of the Fine Arts. Mr.. Lies
picture is an altogether unconventional
work, filled with energy and as arresting
in composition and color effect as a poster
should be. J. Scott Williams has made a
poster almost equally forceful for the
| fourth Liberty Loan. 1t Is the familiar
| figure OF a heroic woman against the
tumultuous background of war and march
ing troops. But it is a far more conven-
tional poster than Mr.. Lies.
PROPERLY TO understand the aims and
l. difficulties Of the artist who would make
a great poster it might be well to accept
a leading hint from the work Of men like
Steinlen and Forain, two French drafts
men who display in all they do the sort Of
skill essential to this method of express
sion. OF Steinlen and Forain 1t may be
said that they so grounded themselves in
the arts of craftsmanship and so ardently
observed life and the world about them
that they can see instantly beyond dis
tracing details and render in a few lines
and masses the dominant, poignant or sig
nifcant passage of form or line that is
the heart of a picture. To be equal to this
miracle a man must have first learned all
that is TO be known about d~rawing-and
much about life itself. Before he knows
what to leave out of a picture he must
know what to put in. Behind the few swift
lines OF a Steinlen drawing there is a world
Of knowledge and experience-of knowl-
edge painfully and patiently acquired,
tested, relieved of its bit Of truth and cast
aside. The resulting work is without a
distracting line or a superfiuous detail,
simple as a cry, startling in its almost
harsh simplicity-and unforgetrable.
CTEINLEN, Forain and the few other
~ living artists who are equally as
skilled are suggestive in their work OF
those men who. having grown very old
realize that wisdom needs but a few words
and that rhetoric and metaphor and long
vocabulariss are essential only to those
who know littls Of life.