Image: Milwaukee Art Museum
Jules Chéret - 'Job' 1895
Jules Chéret - 'Job' 1895
As one of the pioneering poster artists of the late 19th century, Jules Chéret was quick to realize not only the aesthetic but also the commercial potential of his medium caused by changes in technology and society. In 2020 James and Susee Wiechmann donated some 600 Chéret posters to the Milwaukee Art Museum, the largest collection of the artist’s work outside France. More than 100 are on display in the Art Museum’s new exhibit. Assembled by Nikki Otten, the museum’s associate curator of prints and drawings, “Always New: The Posters of Jules Chéret” will be on display through Oct. 16.
Advances in lithography helped free Chéret’s hand from the rigid figuration and cluttered composition of the text heavy, woodblock engraved posters he encountered as a printer’s apprentice. After founding his own Paris studio in 1867, Chéret merged text and image in ways that predicted the advent of cartooning with their harmonious integration of elements. The imaginative morphing typography on some of his posters surely influenced the psychedelic lettering of 1960s poster art. Chéret signed his work on the lithographer’s stone, indicating self-consciousness as an artist. He embraced reproduceable art as the mainstay of the new world of mass production and consumption.
Image: Milwaukee Art Museum
Jules Chéret - 'Halle aux Chapeaux'
Jules Chéret - 'Halle aux Chapeaux', 1892
The proliferation of the new department stores, patronized by the growing middle class, midwifed the birth of a consumer culture that gave him new markets for his work. Chéret’s posters advertised products and events. Some of his work straight-forwardly displays products (new dresses on models) but many featured female figures that allegorize their products or suggest the pleasure derived from their purchase. On his advertisement for a brand of wine spiked with cocaine (for “health & vitality”), his allegorical woman exuberantly leaps, enthralled by the beverage’s high. The medically driven campaign for greater hygiene spurred an array of new skin and hair creams, laxatives, cough drops and soaps. Chéret helped pitch all of those goods in the same bright colors he employed to promote holiday destinations—the spas and beaches made more accessible than ever as rail networks spread across Europe.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Technology in the form of high-volume printing presses, as well as the growth of literacy, resulted in the proliferation of newspapers and magazines. Paris supported as many as 60 dailies during Chéret’s peak years and he worked for many of them. “Always New” includes several posters announcing cliff-hanging scenes from serialized novels—boudoir scenes for romance fiction, shootings and beatings for the crime genre. For his poster touting Emile Zola’s novel on stock speculation, L’Argent, an allegorical woman scatters bank notes and coins.
Image: Milwaukee Art Museum
Jules Chéret - 'Musée Grévin'
Jules Chéret - 'Musée Grévin' [before letters] (detail), 1900
Chéret also promoted entertainment, including comic opera but especially circuses and cabarets. Several American performers working in Paris figure in work displayed as part of “Always New,” including a Black man from Delaware called Delmonico the Lion Tamer and dancer Loie Fuller, whose swirling motion is captured by dynamic strokes.
With its glowing yellows, reds and oranges against cool greens and vibrant blues, “Always New” is a colorful display of images that shed light on the development of advertising as a medium of desire.
