today we have two speakers who know a lot about the artistic and political dimensions of the poster. poster art. in the 20th century, the natalia lauricella is lecturer in the department of art in art history at stanford, one of her areas of expertise is poster design, the late 19th and early 20th centuries natalia received her ph.d. in art history from university of southern california. she has worked as a curatorial assistant of collections

exhibitions at the guggenheim museum in new york. our second speaker is jean cannon, who's a research fellow and curator for north american collections at the hoover institution library archives before to hoover, jean was literary collections research associate at the harry ransom, where she co-curated the 2014 exhibition the world at war 1914 to 1918. she was also the curator of hoover's 2017 exhibit, weapon on the wall american political posters of world one. there will be a brief q&a the end. please use the chat any time during the presentation to submit your questions. prior, you submit your questions. with that, we're going to begin with the natalia lauricella. welcome. thank you. thank you so much for the kind introduction, dr. wakin and thank you to burt sameera hana and their colleagues at the hoover for organizing this event. i'm going to share my screen with my slides from their emergence in the early modern period printed materials have circulated political, social and cultural messages. i'm showing you here a 16th

century woodcut by albrecht dürer, an 18th century engraving by william hogarth, and a 19th century etching by francisco goya. the one drawback of these print media, however, is that they were typically labor intensive and did not yield a large number of impressions, printed images circulate in books and as broadsides and pamphlets and as are prints, but large format mass reproduced and colorful that we have come to know did not exist as such until the 19th century. this change began with the emergence lithography invented by a centerfielder in germany around 1796. lithography is a planet graphic process, meaning that the image is printed from a flat surface or matrix as lithography did not necessitate the laborious work of carving wood or in sizing metal that were part of the early modern print method of woodcut engraving. lithography is a chemical

process on the principle that water and oil resist one another. it involves a thick limestone block onto which an image is drawn directly with an oil crayon. and here i'm showing you a couple of examples of lithographic stones, images still on their surfaces from 19th century. these are rare because oftentimes a lithographic stone would be reused by grinding down the surface. you can see how dense these stones were. you can imagine how heavy they would have been. keep in mind that in printmaking in the stone, the matrix often will be the reverse, the image that would be printed. so you can see the text here is backwards, but when the paper was pulled from it would have been the right way. so the printer would use these stones, would use an ink roller to apply a greasy ink to the stone surface. once the image was there, the image with the printer would then lay the stone. a press bed like this paper carefully atop it, and then pull the stone through the press so

that the image was transferred onto paper through the pressure of the press as long as it was reading one lithographic stone can produce thousands of impressions and this is really why it a mass medium lithography immediately attracted printers because it offered an easy and efficient method for reproducing images, early lithographs or monochrome or black and white. because these easier and more affordable to print and monochrome lithograph served as illustrations and books journals in the form of caricature like one by honoré or as reproductions are original works of art such as this print by the painter. today in these early years, when people did turn to color printers hand to hand to color or tint lithographs for larger edition sizes, printers might have used stencils to expedite the process though this technique sometimes the quality noticeably poorer in general

hand coloring typically inconsistent and such application became less practical the larger the additional sized in the second half of the 19th century, printing lithographs with color became much more common because of technological rendered. the process cheaper, easier and much more efficient a large scale. so how exactly where these lithographs which were called chroma lithographs made. this is a great didactic image from the 1890 as it was published in a trade journal, and it was intended to the services of a commercial lithographic firm, but to print in color first a printer needed to copy various parts of an image onto different stars, although by this period. sometimes printers were using plates rather than limestone because they were much lighter. the printer condensing each stone in a different color and layered color on paper by pulling one stone after another through the press the process of

printing in color lithography was particularly exciting because of the effects of layering color on paper via separate stones look at the way that this image is built through color. so this is over the top in the right. this is the final image you see here. and you can see how color was built through this layering of these different color blocks. first you have the the yellow of her dress, the additional color red is supplied, which creates the the outline of the bottle. and you have a peach color, the green, which is her overcoat, but also the label of the red that the red bottle. and this continues as that image becomes more complex and nuanced and more detailed with the additions of these colors that juxtapose other but also layer to create a new technology course, advancements in the design and production of steam presses in the second half of the 19th century enabled the rapid and large scale printing of cromwell lithographs.

chroma lithography could produce incredibly vibrant images. i'm showing you here a few examples of chroma lithographs that circulated in this period. one is a christmas card on the left, the famous american publisher louis prang, and the other depicts a scene from a cinderella production. this post, maybe the cover of, a music book. this was printed in london, the 19th century chromeos and. these were known or printed often on cheap, ephemeral paper via these large steam presses in industrial settings they became widespread advertising, consumer goods and entertainment. culture illustrated in journals and magazines and the walls of urban centers in the form of posters. as you can see, this painting from 1882 early poster artists crafted their designs to address the changing urban culture one defined by commerce and interpreting, intended to catch the attention of a viewer

hurriedly passing by posters intrigued and informed they attracted the attention of viewers through scale, through bold colors, text and composition, conveying information clearly about a product, venue or performance. one of the most influential poster artists of the late 19th century was jewel. and we can see at once here the visual of these iconic posters, the swirling and alluring central figure, expressive and energetic movement, clearly legible words, vibrant and harmonious colors. from the 1870s onwards, his posters popularized as chroma lithography in the public sphere as well as the fine art world. i'm showing you here two examples. both feature his iconic depictions of female figures. these were known as shadow shows. they often depicted idealized figures in unidentifiable, making it difficult to the exact location of the depicted and evoking a sense of escape as a

respite from the bustle and stresses of urban life. these posters captured the lively visual of the period and its posters, which could be found everywhere in paris. it inspired many artists to work in the medium. chuck artist alphonse mucha was another poster designer of this period. his posters stand out because of their surprising flatness. the elegant weaving of monochrome and multicolored palettes and mosaic backgrounds, which were clearly influenced by a byzantine artwork many of his posters feature a romantic form depicted in colorful poses wearing ornate garments and precious gems. here are two examples i'd left as an advertisement for a printers service. the woman holds a book of prints on her lap as she was surrounded by a print. organic motifs typical macau's art nouveau style. the visual language of the poster is striking the flowers in her hair and those framing in

the background are the same color the soft, beige shade of her dress and the pink floral accents in her hair echo the palette of the prints in the album books. she also reminding the viewer that she is also a printed image. the other images of one of the many vertical posters that luca made for the actress sarah bernhardt. this one made a pale and full blues rays and greens. bernardo much of her face echoes numerous large prints, in part because of ruba bernard, the allure of bella cochran's two decades on either side of 1900, a period that ended once and for all, with the outbreak of world war in 1914, elements of color and treatment, the figure that we saw in these posters proved influential in the early 20th century. even as the medium came into increasing use by government and civilian entities looking to make public statements and draw attention to the war on the left as a colonial enlistment poster

by french artist maurice romberg from 1918. on the right is a women's suffrage poster by an american female artist. evelyn rumsey, carried from 1917. we can see the similarity between these two posters and the posters of schaeffer and luca, the figure in rosenberg's poster is certain aspects of his depiction remind us of his shirts. the figure is in the midst of, in this case, riding a horse and it is unclear where exactly rider is, except because of the clouds you see as his feet, which to suggest that he is somewhere the material world, perhaps in a dream, perhaps in the clouds that somehow shorten the distance between algeria and france. the pastel palette of yellow, pink and beige soothing to the viewers eye, but nevertheless draws us in because of how the scheme is masked in light. we can see the dramatic raise

the sunlight behind him, an appealing image full energy and dynamism, while one that obscures the dark side of the french colonial project, the aim to inspire the viewer in this case the intended audience would be men considering enlisting the colonial army of algeria to help fight for france. indeed the french words resemble arabic writing. the poster includes words in arabic as a clue to us that the designer hoped to interpret a wide audience and many recruits carry themselves. on the other hand, as much more subdued, essential female is cast in cool tones of gray and pale and deep. nevertheless, the poster is a grenade featuring gold framing and gold accents in the main image, it says women's suffrage either side in those gold columns and in the middle her of the fruit of her hands and let her own works praise her in the gaze, the earthly motif we see here her dress grows from the

tree roots and her hands and fingers. elongate into branches and fruits that remind us of the visual techniques. hugo's organic art nouveau style posters also have the same vertical style of markers posters, the format reminding us as contemporary reviewers of how large this poster would have been, carries poster in support of women's suffrage appeals to the viewer with a softer image, more inviting and contemplation, and of their most years, draw on similar artistic tools. central figures of sphere space, harmonious colors to engage audiences through visual clarity and emotion. this is a poster by artist fred speer from 1915. the posters two tone composition is striking and sphere uses color contrast to create a dynamic scene. the poster features a young woman holding her infant in her arms with a peaceful, almost serene expression. she is cast in linares of white and beige, floating in a space that is bursting to identify her

weightless quality in the way her hair and her dress float above her along. with the more obvious clues of bubbles emerging from her mouth, reveal she is under water. a murky green atmosphere, her with a bag markings, a lithographic, stone surface that materials fill fish and kelp hovering around her. so right up here and right down here, you can see that there is these markings she's at the bottom of the sea. you viewers passing or stopping for a closer look with a her immediately imagined the scene may be it would have been impossible to see her the water like this she was passenger from the lusitania a british ship carrying some american passengers that was torpedoed in may 1915 by a german submarine relying on the viewer's prior knowledge of and outrage of. this event, speer, includes only the word list in a muted red

tone, a complementary color. the green of the scene in another american poster with more muted earth tones. we have a reference not to a contemporary event, but to a famous historical uprising. i'm showing you here people on a face poster from around 1917. this is what we call a more academic esthetic that resembles painting a young woman simply dressed in clothes of a historical era carrying a drum strapped around neck takes up most of the image to her right and left her other women focused and stern. and then there's a crowd behind these three central women. we can see a silhouette that's of other figures against the bright orange sky at the horizon. these women are marching. we can't see where they're going, but we know that they're united and they're determined. this is the so-called spirit of women power that one of the references in the clear text, the scene nora uses this anachronistic depiction of french women peasants uprising.

the french revolution of 1789 as a way to generate enthusiasm and energy to inspire american in organizations in the us, to promote the us for a and i want to bring in here any example of a famous revolutionary painting by a french artist saint lucia dell'acqua, whose painting is of july of the july. of 1830. so on today's image hearkens back to 1789, the esthetic of this poster is reminiscent of french painting of 1830. we have the similar central figure grouping her action scene, similar in energy of line and form both of these not well posters from the period relied on vibrant color to intrigue viewers. here we had to feel alexander stein lenin's monochrome poster russian prisoners of war from 1917. the scene features two figures huddled together, staring out with vacant eyes. they fill up most of the poster

by the two posts on either side. are these posters part of the defense, or perhaps the entryway to the prison? the caption for the image translates to an enemy country. russian prisoners die of hunger, it appears carved the wooden plaque above of them. could this be men's to resemble a message of bleak harvest by the prisoners. for the viewer to see figures in the background, give us a sense of how many people live in this prison and how far back the prison space goes. stylin cleverly uses the weight of the paper, which is known in printmaking as the reserve to represent the snow of this cold and inhospitable setting in which prisoners find themselves behind a barbed wire. the emotion of that scene is captured in part, by the way, that figures are rendered the marks of silence as lithographic crayon are evident in the way he's filled in with the clothing of the two central figures. indeed, this poster hearkens back the early days of pornography when the medium is used to reproduce drawings. here it looks as if we have

styled the sketch of a scene as though he is there witnessing the suffering firsthand strategy. he might have been used to create a sense of immediacy for the posters viewer. i first drawing them in for a closer look and then inspiring action style. allen was a well-known french poster artists of late 19th century, and here i am showing you some of his most well-known posters one for the nightclub, the shaniya and the other for a milk product red and black inks. these posters, which feature strong silhouettes against plain backgrounds. the 1890s posters are showing you by style illustrate the dynamic breadth of lithography capacity to use simple design in monochrome or polychromatic to convey a message and both expressive and abstract ways artist jewel abdul's paper also for a simple design and palette charcoal and brown in his 16 french poster with the caption

only zohar will get them both must figure is of a young, young soldier and is dynamic, his arm is outstretched as he looks over his shoulder behind, perhaps encouraging his friends, fellow soldiers, and in turn us viewers to follow him, then quickly uses the rectangular surface of the lithographic matrix to his advantage. the figure seems to come from the left and at any moment will pass through to the right. faivre captures this energetic movement in clear diagonal line from left to top right. the strongly paralleled by the soldier's rifle the turns of the beggar's dress as they are stand out because america has chosen not to include anything behind the romance. the cream of the paper is in stark contrast to the figure he really pops out at us. and this is similar to steinem's strategy. cabaret posters, the 1890s include in a text here is not incorporated into the scene as a

wasserstein's poster. rather, it stands out clearly against the white background only though written out as if directly on the paper by hand, handwriting that is echoed beneath the typed text with the words to say they are in enlist with a simple design, a muted palette. several created one of the most famous posters of world war one, but most artists of the period took advantage of a simple palette using black and white, in stark contrast to brighter here. for instance, two posters by the british cartoonist and poster designer bert thomas that play on civilian guilt to garner support for the war. bonds preferred. on the left, we have a colored that feares two soldiers identifiable by their headgear who stare out at as they seem to emerge from the depths of a black background. this is another instance of the absence of ink on paper. the white of the reserve is particularly effective, especially when highlighted by the soft grays.

give the men's face their contours above and below them. black text pops out from an orange background. you buy war bonds. we did our bit in the text. you. we are bolder and larger than thof the bond creating a direct connection and contrast the viewer and the figures printed in the poster. the poster is in its design elements of and text carefully and effectively in the posters. simple straight forward legibility well as its appealing design and color palette would have undoubtedly made one that passers by lingered over their way to or from work. thomas's other at right uses a similar palette of orange, black and gray, though this time in a more complex composition against an orange sky, we see the silhouette of a cannon, its barrel and an upright upward diagonal pointing toward the battlefield a at the right the cannon and soldiers printed in gray are outlined and highlighted in black, and even

the reserve of white. you can see here right at the center, at the back of the central figure beneath this group is the text feed the guns with war bonds and help end the war. unlike in other thomas poster, these words are composed white. the reserve scraped out the black background outlined the same orange used for the sky again we have a cohesiveness or unity of the poster achieved through form color. the words intended for the viewer who are british citizens at home echo the colors of sky above the soldiers in battle drawing a connection between the actions of the soldier and the potential help or action of the civilians. the message here is clear. so we've been discussing how poster artists might intended to convey their messages in clear appealing ways, but how we know how people felt or what they thought. they saw these posters and. this is one of the hardest parts of studying poster because we are often left unable to track reception history.

sometimes a poster publisher reprint a poster. so we have sense of how many, how popular particular poster image might have been and how effective it was. sometimes posters were carefully, as was the case with the ones we looked at today because of an appealing design or perhaps they were the work of a famous artist. but what we can think about is format, although it might not be clear from this powerpoint these are not small prints and they were not intended to be held and experienced in any sort of intimate or personal way. these were typically large around two and a half or three feet by three or four feet. they were based on the building's walls. morris columns intended to be seen as people passed. in other words, they were very public and their reception would have been part of a shared and experience of communal. this brings up the idea of imagined community a term developed by a scholar named anderson writing newspapers and

the formation of shared perspective by way of individual ized experience occurring on maps through engagement with print while unfamiliar with one another's identities. people could imagine their shared existence, their simultaneous performance of this action. whereas, anderson focused on newsprint and the importance of this form of quote unquote print capitalism in the origins of national identity, it is fruitful to explore how the shared experience of using posters a different form of printed matter also contributed to the creation of a national culture and identity this understanding that a viewer was not the only one looking at a poster might have inspired feelings of nationalism, honor, guilt, shame. all of these were emotions that the the designers of these posters and their publishers hoped to evoke their viewers, often to encourage them not only to feel, but to act. so now that we've covered some

of these artistic strategies involved in making a successful poster here, i'm going to hand them over to colleague jean cannon, who's going to walk us through some of the political dimensions of these posters. thank you. okay. you, natalia, that was great. thank you. thank you to everyone for joining today. i'm just going to share my screen quickly. i am delighted today to have the opportunity to discuss might be my favorite collection at hoover. and yeah, delighted to be here with my great colleague natalia, with whom i've taught many classes here at hoover using the poster collection. and natalia, as we've seen, is the real expert on the composition and craft posters. whereas my own research in this genre has focused more on the social political context of posters, particularly, particularly as those relate to the first world war, which, you know, in somewhat biased opinion really is a golden age for the

art of the poster. so today i thought i would discuss the great war and posters with a focus mainly on american posters that are drawn from my curatorial area here. hoover. i'll also mention there are more than 10,000 american posters from all over one in the collections. we are really just looking at the tip the iceberg today, but my goal is to explain a bit of the history, how and why posters were produced in. mass in america, in the world war one era and to look at some of the strategies in terms of propaganda and public opinion that were being pursued by these. okay. so i wanted to start with these two images not because we need a black hat for halloween to be though. that's nice. not because i know we have a lot of dog and cat lovers in the audience, but because i think these two posters in particular really show off what color lithography of this time period can do. i remember many years ago when i first started researching for an exhibition on warrior one, you

know, i went to the stacks to look at posters and i expected to find faded ink and crumbling. instead, i opened a drawer and the first poster i saw was this cat. and i honestly thought, it was going to jump out of the drawer and claw, claw me. so i always use this poster as an example of eye catching this particular mainstream art of this time period can be, and i think that's really important. the context of war. one, we need to remember that know this is the period before broadcast radio and broadcast tv when the average civilian walking down the street, not looking at their phone had a lot more attention to give to their surroundings. so propaganda posters become, you know, as one critic put it, weapons of mass. okay, okay. so many stores argue that the first world war was, the full, full expression of war. and what they mean by that is that it's a war that is waged

not just as a professional army fighting. another professional army, you know, think napoleon ionic times. but a war that is waged against an entire society, including civilians. i mean, this is the big but somewhat sweeping claim. but it does point out how mass print media becomes very important during this time. so in this poster example, as natalia discussed earlier, the drowning mother and child civilian victims of the lusitania shipwreck and the artist doesn't even have to reference lunatic lusitania or say, remember the lusitania because the attack so shocking and so top mind for americans it had been the news specifically. it was an orchestrated attack against civilians and that was so unusual. nevertheless, let's remember that you know the lusitania sinks in 1915, but it is not until 1917, a full two years later, that america actually enters the first world war. so within that time period,

there's this raging debate in, america, between interventionists and not interventionists. on the one hand, some people think, you know, this is a european war. why would we throw lives, money at something that doesn't us? we're separated by an ocean. let's stay out of it. other people say, you know, democracy is in peril. sovereign nations are being and occupied and we're obligated. get involved. i'm sure this sounds to you all. this is a debate that, you know, happened during world war one where we're two yesterday and today in 1917. however the u.s. does indeed commit to war. and president woodrow wilson knows has to galvanize public opinion and bring people together behind the effort in order to achieve victory. so a few days after declaring, wilson establishes first ever state bureau propaganda in america. he calls this the committee on public information and chooses an old friend, the george creel, to run committee.

so george creel had done publicity for wilson's campaigns and was a veteran of journalism and publishing. he actually got his start in journalism as a joke writer. william randolph hearst. so he is in the middle of this picture, decidedly like someone who does not write jokes for a living, but was great of propaganda and almost immediately he uses his contacts to put together a group of madison avenue artists. so think mad men of the 19 teens and they were well known for commercial art and book magazine illustrations he calls them division for pictorial publicity. and he puts another veteran the of the biz in charge. and this is charles dana gibson who one of the best known commercial artists in new york. this time you probably recognize his famous gibson girl who is whose featured here, the gibson girl was an iconic, tall, thin socialite with bouffant hair,

very popular in the 1890s and early 1900s. but quickly was replaced by the flapper. but gibson knows everybody in the publishing business, but he faces the challenge of this. how do you get a group of hustling new york artists to work for free? well, apparently you use an age old, you throw a party. so gibson, a a weekly meeting at keene's chophouse on 36th street in new york. so basically he says, okay, guys, you come over to keys wednesday night and you're going to serve your country having a martini and sketching for your government. a representative. the committee on public information would come up by the train from washington, dc with a wish list. so, you know, we need a poster for food conservation this week or what have? you and these guys would sit around the table, smoke their pipes and sketch. so a lot of these posters were

drawn very quickly. and with a lot of urgency. and you can kind of feel in the design and also just side to show you what a nerd i am. this is the picture of king's chophouse that i actually took the time i was in new york and on the right is herbert hoover's pipe on display in the fourth year as he used to hang out at queens. well, okay, who are these artists? many them were well known in new york, so example here, joseph pennell pennell was actually a quaker and a pacifist from germantown, pennsylvania. however, he happened to be in berlin in 1914 when the war broke out. he was just horrified by what was. and most of his art. as you can here, really emphasizes a fear of invasion. so here in this poster you see planes into new york harbor and feel like whenever we show this poster in a or a tour, everyone

immediately thinks of 911. on the other side of the spectrum. and we have a very young norman rockwell who's whose parties the painting in this effort and rockwell, he's only 20 years old when the war breaks out in europe, even though you can see here he's already drawing cover art for the saturday evening post. so he's he's already made his mark. he's kind of an up and coming little brother of the queens chophouse club, if you will, and you can see that his style is already pretty established. he draws a lot of children. he uses a lot of homespun humor. and somehow, you know, he's able to put into into patriotic context here. so, for example, on the right, have this adorable child sporting his victory pins and you can by the wad of cash in his pocket that war lines are proving to be more lucrative than his paper route. okay if there's one person who the sort of don of this group if

you will, it was this gentleman, james flag. and so flag was a sort of fun and flamboyant and new york personality in this time. he had been drawing for the magazine since the age of 12. so he was he was a regular on madison avenue and, a huge backer of the war effort. but maybe his biggest achievement of this era, as you can see from this photograph, is he was famous for, his famous drawing, the i want you poster here. and if you look closely at this picture, you can see the flag actually, the picture of uncle sam on his own face. and again, he was designing this poster very quickly. so he just used what he had, which was his own face and not a model. okay. however, the funny thing about that, that as flag got older, he actually more and more came to resemble all the image that's in this poster. so, you know, in this picture, he's dressed up, but he actually

did end up looking somewhat like this at the at the end of his life but flag was very skilled in stealing or shall i say borrowing, designs. so keeping in mind that, you know, war breaks out europe and in 1914 and america does enjoin until later these artists you know they had had a few to see what designs were coming of other countries and assessing they thought was successful. so here on the left, you have the prototype of the i want you poster, which is a british poster featuring lord kitchener, who was the of the navy for the british. so this poster was very popular in britain so flag just read designed is always a red flag also innovative in some other ways. open air publicity was. one he came up with this great publicity in which he sketched war posters on the steps of the york public library in midtown

manhattan. so, you know, for those of you who have been watching ghostbusters halloween season, he's he's he's doing this right beside the famous lion statues that are on fifth avenue. so basically, you know, publicize the fact that if you wanted give $1,000 for a war bond, he would sketch on the spot. he would make you a model for a poster which you can see is happening here. so this was just gangbusters in new york, ended up in all the newspapers. and so this is the result of that that stunt of that day. okay. so let's just, you know, look, some of the types of posters that these artists were creating, you can sort of group them a bit thematically, if you will. first and foremost, they were producing, recruiting posters. we could probably spend hour just on recruiting posters alone, but i'll show you a few

here and get through a few of the strategies when the war breaks out. america a very, very, very small army. so it is crucial to have people enlist and to build up, build up munitions. and so recruiting is sort of the first person the agenda for these guys in this poster on the left, this was actually done by a young woman named laura, who was an art student in chicago. that was another she went to a contest that the division of pictorial publicity put together. that was another way to get basically free art designs is to have contest and you can it says on which side of the window are you and in the forefront you have a sort of dandy dapper character. it looks almost like a a character from a fitzgerald novel. and he's looking out the window or toward soldiers walking away. so that's an example of shaming, which actually comes, comes comes into play with a lot of

the slogans that are on these on these posters. and then on the other hand you have posters, the one on the right that are sort of to the adventure of, you know, joining the and going off to war and going to exotic places and the navy certainly had some of the most vibrant of these types of posters, as you can see here, other also offer technical education. so you learn to fly a plane, learn to become a mechanic, better your life. that was that was a common strategy as. now of course in this time period women were not officially allowed to join the the armed services. that would not happen until 1948. but there were certainly many ways in which they served the war effort. many posters were addressed as so many served as volunteer nurses and also as you can see,

but in the by the snappy uniform on the left here, they served as ambulance drivers, which was dangerous work. and because would have to go out into combat zones and administer first aid. and also remember that know very few men and almost no women knew how to drive or or on a car. in 1917. so they had to do a lot of training and on the right you can see one of the hello girls who worked on the western front. so these were female telephone operators, mostly recruited from at&t and they were instrumental in overseeing switchboards that connected both the front lines and the front trenches to, headquarters behind the lines, and also commanders of different allied nations since radio was in its infancy in this period, they played a huge role in terms of communications in general, but there were other depictions of women in uniform.

so so, you know, women are sometimes become symbols as well, especially in this series of posters produced howard chandler christy he produced christy girls. they were sort of similar to the gibson girls and so the esthetic is somewhat the same but here is you know appealing to his sense of masculinity. and then you can see on the right he has his own sort of sexualized twist on the i want you poster poster. and, you know, as the movement starts to pick up pace, christy eventually starts to move away from this type of imagery and revamps his career by painting powerful men, in particular past presidents. so fun fact if you visit the archives reading room, you can actually see a portrait of herbert hoover done by howard chandler christie looks very different than what you're seeing here. okay so these these also they

created a lot of designs to address the home fronts and this is a poster in italian i have used in class often because we both find it unusual in terms of its content and design. unlike most posters of the time period as it uses a lot of text in the graphics are very detailed and busy but essentially this poster addresses issue of hyphenated american -- within the labor force. it reveals that you know especially in large industrial cities there was anxiety that it's hyphenated americans german americans, irish-americans might have more to their countries of origin than to america and course, it's a lot of immigrants were working in factories and shipbuilding. there was a perceived threat of enemy agitation at home.

right. and so just in general there are a lot of posters produced at this time period relating to, you know, industry in general. so you can see, you know, a ship shipbuilder, you know, in lockstep with soldiers, sailors as german u-boats had decimated british ships early in the. so britain came to rely heavily heavily on the u.s. for shipbuilding and also more men, you know, volunteered to serve in the armed forces. women entered, the workplace and munitions factories, particularly through the ywca. a the ywca would put 26,000 women to work during world war one. so i just love this poster on right. and i sort of i always think of it as the prototype for the rosie the riveter poster that would come later during war two. and of you can't have a series of dramatic war posters without

spreading some fear of the enemy. as you can see in these very dramatic posters. so in this poster on the left you see germany depicted as savage brute, which will you know, will cross the ocean from europe and destroy america. you know, with violent ways. i personally, whenever i look at this poster, i think of king kong, even though, of course, king kong does not it doesn't come out until 1933. right. but when fun fact i'll share with you is that hoover the collection of cooper who was co-director of king kong and served in world war one as a pilot and he actually met his collaborator on king kong, who was a cameraman. the us army during the war. so, you know, i just speculate whether or not these types of images would have influenced, you know, that that that film and on the right here, i think, is, you know, one of the more dramatic posters of the war.

you see the slogan, remember belgium, which is used over over again in these wartime posters. belgium was and occupied by germany early in war and news reports of atrocities against women and children become a real rallying cry for the war effort in allied nations. yes. okay, but let's let's end on an uplifting note here. as californians love food, have to say some food posters now, because herbert hoover's extensive work providing food and medical relief to belgium, world war one, we have an incredible collection of hoover archives that to food relief during the war just in general and as we are an institution dedicated to preserving history. i wanted show you this poster on the left. as you can surmise here from this image on food conservation is tremendously important in america. during world war one, citizens on the homefront were encouraged

to canned food as patriotic preserve or to plant what they called victory gardens and to have weightless wednesdays that we could be sent overseas to soldiers early in the war. german u-boats sank nearly two pounds million of british wheat. so essentially america, you because of vast farms in the midwest, becomes the breadbasket of europe and, you know, we sent food overseas in mass quantities and then lots of new organizations popped up such as the ones you see on the one you see on the right here. these were known the land lassies. again, very snappy uniforms. and they were they were mostly blue stocking women from cities who went out to the midwest and farmed land for the for the war effort. so this poster just it has a beautiful design color composition and it's a staff although there there are many.

okay. so i think i am a out of time here, but i want to encourage you all if you know, if you'd like to learn more about poster art from many different time periods, not just the ones that we discussed today. please do visit dynamic design the the exhibition that we are that we currently have in the gallery that is in the hoover rotunda is a beautiful collection of poster art from from all over the world. okay, so now my, my colleague natalia is going to rejoin me and we are happy to take any questions you have for us. we're going to give you a moment to get them into the chat. i want to just to start with, i'm going ask you on the first question, while other people are getting their questions together, i know that you have talked a quite a lot on on poster art design. and i'm wondering, like, what is your strategy of bringing the

posters and the history and the design techniques like a live for students. yeah thank you so much for that question. yeah so as we mentioned she and i have co-taught together teach a class at stanford the history of prints propaganda protest and so a lot that is based on the technical of crafting of these images how they talked about in my presentation. so the class that i do incorporates visits, print shops and as much, you know, in-person viewing of this material as possible, which is why of course we come to the hoover so. to me, i think one of the most important things and this is how i was sort of ending the presentation, was talking format. so how can we kind of get a sense of the way that a print or in this case a poster would have had an impact on viewers. when we think about some the elements of its materiality, you know, obviously things like the way that color is used and, you know, text design, but also the format, how big it was, how it

would have been installed. that's what jean and i can kind of talk when we do this class together. you know, i can give a little bit of the background of how these these posters are made. and then jean kind of dives in there with the kind of political context. and i do really like this idea, and this is the kind of throughline of the class, which is that, you know, from from the very beginning, that prints were, you know, became a big part of western culture. they would have been circulating this kind of political and social message, whether it was in the form of a woodcut in the 16th century or up until you know, we have offset lithography and other of, you know, digital hybrid process later. so thank you for that question. i actually wanted to ask you one, which is if i can speaking, which is, you know, find these posters for the hoover's collection. are these typically posters that would have been, i assume, my own research and archival work that these might not have been posters that had actually been posted on the street. those would have, you know,

speaking materiality would have been destroyed in by rain. and, you know, people posting over them are these ones that maybe were if you actually can, you know find out this information? were these ones were, you know, set aside by the publisher or kind of in the extra categories or, you know, how exactly does that factor into the decision? i'm going to yeah. i mean, it's hard know the provenance of all the posters that you assume like because the posters we have are not gummed on the back and most of them are in are in good condition. i think they would have been extras that were never actually and you know, they printed these in the millions. so it's you they there would have been extra stores of them and you know, almost as soon as wore one. and, you know, herbert hoover and his curators and people you know, out to europe and various and russia and various places to pick up, you know, what's called ephemera, because things like posters, right. people don't think of them as

like art when they're first made. right. and you and i show them in classes as but they weren't, they weren't produced be viewed like that right. so so it's wonderful that, you know they did collect so expansively so that we can kind of look at them as know historical artifacts. now and i'm going to let our colleague samir pitch us any questions she may have. yeah, we have a lot of questions from the audience. thank you both for your informative and educational and visually interesting presentation. we have a question about this one's for jean george is considered the mastermind of u.s. propaganda campaigns. which poster or set of posters in world war one did he consider the most in recruiting american doughboys? oh, i've not come across

anything that actually stays. what his opinion was about what was most often active. as natalia mentioned, that's very hard to to know what the reception was. i mean, i would say that i wouldn't want you as wild, but, you know, it was wildly successful and that was definitely one they printed in the in the millions. but yeah, i would have to research further actually to see if he actually, you know, ever expressed an opinion on what was most successful. and just to jump in there and sometimes to know, yeah, how many were in a one print run rate, how many decided to print, oftentimes i will, in my own research, find a, you know, what they wanted to do is the print run. sometimes they just sort of stop in the middle, sometimes they reprint. so that kind archival material is hard to find as as jane was just saying, you know, to have it pinpoint exactly how many exist is especially when we're in this kind of land of ephemera

where these were in the hundreds of it's pretty hard to find out and the records are somewhat incomplete it's like we have a collection for four creole, but it doesn't really have all the numbers in it. but i know that you know, some of the more dramatic ones. so for example the remember belgium poster that is documented and then they printed that in the millions to. so thank you. this is a question for both of you. what do you sense is the relationship between political and entertainment value and these posters for their makers and audiences, which matters more for visibility because there's so much overlap in the history of the form and in their visual language, mean don't mean to take them and an idea well you start i've got an idea but you start like oh yeah i will happily so yeah the way that i was tracing the early history of these posters is that they were certainly connected to these urban centers which in which culture was becoming a much bigger deal. and there's a really text by

susan sontag on the poster where she calls poster design all about this esthetic sizing. so some of the ones that i showed you i think really have that kind of they're trying to draw you in. there is a kind of luring message that's at stake there that i think could be similar to trying to, you know, attract audience to a a certain performance or a certain shopper, you know, to sell a certain there's a certain idea of selling that's on here. and then, jean, i think, brought in some more interesting examples how they're using not necessarily me, they're just more kind of ominous materials in the kind of visual language that we're there. so i would be curious to hear what jane has to say. yeah, well, was struck actually, when i was listening to your presentation about how i was thinking about differences the differences in the pictures are based on the nations they're coming out of. right. so you're kind of drawing from a french tradition and then like

finding continuity in images that have more negative space, that aren't quite as busy, that don't look as much like typical advertising, that we would, you know, recognize now as dutch so i kind of feel like, you know the french posters pull from fine art and the russian is pull from kind of constructive art whereas the american and british press are more from really commercial and magazine that like culture. so i don't know if you if you see that like in the posters that you've that you've looked at. definitely and i think brought in the choice to bring in sheri and luca. this is kind in the narrative of poster history. these are two major figures are certainly many others outside of france but even within france and those two artists are quite distinct in that of simplification. i mean, and look or you could call them simplified, but his kind of esthetic choices are quite distinct. there are a lot that even of the ones that jean brought in that have a lot more text, you know,

and talking about entertainment and and kind of these commercial posters in, the late 19th century that are much more textured, much more kind of complex designs, as i showed you the chroma lithographs that they possibly produce were incredibly li detailed and dramatic so the choices that luca and trey were making were we're taking this medium into a kind of a different, almost avant garde, very modern tradition. and so definitely was tracing that those early posters that i showed in presentation kind of transitioning from late 19th century into world war one. but i think there is a definitely a wide variety especially if we didn't really in too many russian posters, but they're they're very social realist. they're actually coming from their own, you know, other artistic esthetic of the of the moment. yeah. it does seem like surya movies are really the bridge because are fine art but very aware of the advertise angle of it. yeah i think so.

that question. yeah. and actually that your answer that question answered some of the ones that are kind of questioning political posters and how they live in a liminal space between art and politics and how the context in which they're viewed changes their meaning. so if you had any additional comments on that that was one, i think this is something we talk about in our class quite a lot about you know how we it we're reviewing it in a library or a museum and that sort of that changes. yeah, changes that can change the meeting sort of. i don't know anything can tell you at that point. i mean the kind of the practice of collecting these things and putting them into libraries and, museums obviously takes them out of the circulation, even though they would have been originally seen in. right. so it's an it's so hard to find and that's why i wanted to include that one painting on the streets of paris, the 1880s.

but it included the one at the end with the morris column. it's hard to find this kind of archival imagery. and i know jean and i talked about this, you know, what kind images can can give you a sense how these things were viewed in their in their contemporary moments. but i think jean and i were trying to in our present editions, also ground us in called a period ii is, you know, how do we reimagine how someone living in this period would have seen this well, what kind of feelings would they have had, which are very different from us as historians in 2023, like looking back on these posters. but again, things like format and imagining where they would have been seen and kind of coming around a corner and being struck by one of these posters on a wall or on a column or seeing a whole group of people at them together and being curious, wanting to see what's what the kind of fuss was about. and these are important things to remember kind of context to viewing what have probably really transformed how people felt when they looked at these things. yeah, in our archival world,

world always golden to find an actual picture of these posters on the street, or especially people looking at them and to, you know, like, are they when is this happening? you know, how are they? how are they posted? yeah. i mean, also seeing them next to each other, right. so there would have been you know, we also know exactly how someone would have confronted of these posters in the context. yeah, i feel surrounded by entertainment, you know, posters or maybe other enlistment posters or were there conflicting posts? you know, there is a the context is important to try and keep in mind as we're especially trying to think about this reception history, which is often very tricky to so you know, we're pretty much out of time but maybe we have time for one more question and this one would be. so can you speak a little bit the importance or value of being to access these posters in a digital format or online how has that changed you? natalia, for you teaching and

jean-charles so for your engagement with the collection material, you know very well. i mean, in the digital age is an incredible resource, especially for so i, you know, as i mentioned in answering jane's questions at the beginning, it's really important for me when teaching the history of print and printmaking to bring students in as much as possible to to see this, this material in person. and so when i am, you know, i worked very closely with jean and with bert in the various visits that i've had to the hoover to certain posters and, i can get a much better sense of them as they're digitized. i mean, i also have the resources. you know, jean's knowledge of the collection. so when you go, you know, digging in the archives together and can look at of this material, but as a scholar, i mean, these are hard. they're not really this is just something, you know, i was thinking about even with captioning my images, they're not really titled, you know they're kind of the titles are just sort of the text on them doesn't give you a sense of what

you're actually looking at. so having that digital representation as you're doing your research, just kind of completely changes how can gather information and what kind of close looking you can do even online, which is not the same as doing it in person for sure, but it makes a big difference. yeah, i agree. i mean, i think it's been wonderful. you know, we have here under 30,000 posters. we digitized. this 33,000 and we have another project going where catalog posters will be digitized. and so it's wonderful for scholars who can't access you our reading room, for example, but also it's wonderful to be able to just quickly search for them and compare, you know, compare and contrast that, you know, absolutely essential really when you're looking at posters because they don't exist in a vacuum like they're of a time period. they, you know they're they're all they're reacting to one another. people are copying design. you know, as we mentioned as i mentioned so that is just, you

know, a fantastic resource to be able to have like a wide catalog of that you can use very quickly. i think although nothing, you know, as we know nothing. compares with seeing them in person, especially because of the as you mentioned, their size and also the of the color, the fact that after a century, these be just as effective and like, you know, they want to jump of the wall hat you but but digitizing them to make them available to a wide audience has been. well i mean, it's been very popular with researchers, too, you know, they love it because they can use it in classes and and in books and writings. right. but just to add, also i think what genius thing is there is no different there's a huge difference in actually coming to see them in person because there are some things that even in terms of the way that they were

used and the kind of the material remnants of their history is so important to consider as well is exactly as jean was saying, how bright, are these colors, how much have they faded? have they not faded? but also, are there kind of any indications of how these were in, you know, were they installed and can you see if there was coming on the back, you see, if they were ripped. so things like that, are they how are they stored, you know, kind of gives you a sense of their of their history as, a material object as well as your life. a material object? yes. that you can look at, you know, the process i mean, since this is not quite the same for hoover, but in the america posters i showed you, some of them are so big that when actually see them in person, you realize that they're different sheets of paper that have been printed in are pasted together. some of these are so large that you couldn't even print them on one on one with stone block at once. so they had to be kind of pieced together. there are a lot of clues that you can you get out when you actually look at these printed materials in person, which is valuable, but the meantime, even being able to that comparison is

so important online. but just in terms of know there's there's actually not a ton of scholarship posters. and i think part of that is because just in terms of the material, it's hard to access and you know, because it's unwieldy, because it's big and you know, everything. so yeah. so having a digital bank of done is like the starting place. a great thank you so much. think this would conclude our webinar. okay. well thanks everyone for joining us. thank you so much as have to speak about this topic and great to be in dialog with you as always jean guys love right and theyso author stacy schiff, whye

we talking to you at the state department? largely because we have glorious newly refurbished rooms to celebrate any beautiful, opulent book that gives us the history of those rooms and the collection in its entirety to celebrate as well. and we are sitting in the ben franklin diplomatic room at this time. what is your connection to the state department's