Advertising as an art. British poster of the late XIX - early XX century from the collection of the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin Automatic translate

The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts presents the exhibition Advertising as Art. British poster of the late XIX - early XX century from the collection of the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkin ". The exhibition includes more than 150 advertising prints from the museum’s collection, representing the work of the best English artists and designers - Aubrey Beardsley, The Brothers Baggarstaff, Edward McKnight Coffer, Tom Purvis, Edward Bowden, Austin Cooper and other masters who made London the glory of the capital of world design. The exposition is timed to coincide with the release of the catalog-reason, dedicated to the collection of British posters at the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin and continues a series of museum projects dedicated to the results of research and restoration work to restore fragile documents of the era - works of early industrial printing. These are illustrated advertisements, political posters, samples of commercial lithography - business cards, invitation cards and bookplates.

Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin owns a collection of applied graphics of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries, unique in terms of completeness and value, the most interesting period associated with the emergence and development of national schools of artistic advertising. In each country, illustrated advertisements were named according to their traditions and national characteristics. All important news items - official government decrees and advertisements - have long been called "The Poster" in England. First of all, this was due to the fact that for several centuries of its existence, the centralized royal post was not only engaged in the delivery of letters, but also performed the duties of notifying subjects about events taking place in the state. All provincial news could be found in local post offices:about upcoming fairs, weddings and christenings, livestock sales and hiring workers. So, along with a German poster and a French poster, an extraordinary phenomenon appeared - a British commercial poster. Great Britain became the birthplace of one of the brightest phenomena in the world art culture of the twentieth century - advertising design - and has gone from denial to "the triumphant reign of illustrated advertising among the arrogant muses of art."

The exhibition "Advertising as an Art…" opens with works by the pioneers of 19th century English advertising - Aubrey Beardsley, Beggarstaffs, Walter Crane. Already at the beginning of the 19th century, the United Kingdom’s leadership in advertising, in its ingenuity and originality, was undeniable, but only self-taught artisans were engaged in commercial ads. While in France the creative experiments of artists in advertising were delightful and, importantly, generously encouraged by customers, in England, Victorian society despised advertising as a marginal phenomenon. British artists were long alienated from the needs of the growing market, and it took decades to overcome conservatism. And although the first experiments in illustrating commercial ads of the most daring English artists - the already mentioned Beggarstaffs,Walter Crane and Aubrey Beardsley were most often fruitless attempts to interest advertisers, they already demonstrated the enormous potential of British advertising.

Advertising cartoons of members of the London Sketch Club - Dudley Hardy, John Hassall, William True and many other illustrators - became the themes of individual rooms. At the end of the 19th century, it was their merit that was the reconciliation of the British with commercial advertising for theatrical performances, literary novelties, products and services. The irony and captivating genre of caricature were met with condescension by the stern audience.

In the works of commercial designers in Great Britain of the first decades of the twentieth century - posters of the companies London Transport, London Underground, the London-North-East Railway - a new stage in the art of advertising is presented. This is already a professional and advanced phenomenon, modern graphic design, the authority and popularity of which has been actively developing. In 1924, the Royal Society of Arts organized and hosted an industrial design competition among students with honorable mentions to the winners. In 1930, the Society of Industrial Artists was formed in London, bringing together designers and specialists in the field of applied graphics.

A small deviation from the commercial theme is the political satire of the late 19th century and the visual agitation of the "Red Thirties", when art could no longer be separated from politics, and the work of young Marxist artists was a kind of social activity, a political art movement. For progressive artistic youth, the romantic image of the Soviet state was like a beacon of hope. In 1933, an international association of revolutionary artists, the Artist’s International, was established in London. Clifford Rowe managed to organize a real Soviet "agitprop" (his experience of working in IZOGIZ in the USSR was useful).

One of the most striking sections of the collection is the commercial graphics of the British-Dutch oil company Shell, which has maintained a policy of trust in contemporary art. Works from the group’s corporate collection of modernist paintings were used in advertising design. Thus, the work of innovative painters: Duncan Grant, Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, Tristram Hillier and many other artists who began their careers in the 1920s – 1930s, were popularized through the wide publication of their paintings in advertising posters.

With the advent of the twentieth century, many mental stereotypes were overcome or lost in Great Britain, an evolution of the mechanism of artistic perception took place, which seemed to be unchanged, and with this, changes in aesthetic tastes and style preferences appeared. Socio-psychological and value orientations have changed, the profession of a commercial designer in the United Kingdom has acquired a high status. The work of many artists has become a reason for national pride; thanks to the success and worldwide recognition of British designers - Edward Wadsworth, Fred Taylor, Frank Newbold, Edward Koffer, Austin Cooper and Clifford Rowe - applied graphics expanded the scope of cultural heritage and found its way into 20th century art museums. Britain has not only regained a leading role in the art of advertising, but also made it one of its national treasures.

The curator of the exhibition is Irina Nikiforova, leading specialist of the department of art of the countries of Europe and America of the XIX-XX centuries.