POSTER EXHIBITION.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19481, 30 November 1928, Page 15

POSTER EXHIBITION.

(By G. M. L. Lester.) At the present moment, and for the modest sum of one shilling, any intelligent citizen of Christchurch may enjoy an exhibition of pictures which differs from any of those which have heretofore hung on the walls of our Art Gallery. Miss Guy's collection of posters is quite remarkable in its completeness, and in its appeal. It is common knowledge that the demands of business men for effective means of advertisement have opened what is in fact a new field for art, and one which is so truly in accord with the modem feeling for decoration, and so closely related to the decorative art of the Renaissance that we cannot but regard it as of prime importance. I am not qualified to speak on poster work as an art, nor can I assess the value of these beautiful pictures as advertisements, but in view of tffe fairyland of travel and adventure which they suggest to the average man I might be allowed to hazard a remark or two on their educational value.

| A child learns for many years almost [ wholly by the aid of its eyes. Things j heard no doubt linger in tne memory, | things smelt, curiously enough, are | sometimes the most lasting and poig- ! nant even of our youthful memories, but it is by tilings seen that in the main we take seisin of the world that 'is our rightful heritage. If then the objects of light are, as they were in my young days, drab for the most part, often formless, and outside the world of Nature, strangely artificial, the child enters on an impoverished estate and misses many of the joys and the responsibilities of a full and normal life. If you look at Miss Guy's collection of pictures first get hold if you can of a book called "Dream Days," by Kenneth • Grahame, and read therein the chajpter called "Its walls were as of Jaspar." You will then understand something of Miss Guy's point of view when she emphasises the educational value of posters. In the story, a little boy of narrow life, and vivid imagination finds a priceless mediaeval book, and therein a wonderful picture of some great city, painted in exactly the decorative manner which is .the manner of the best poster artists of 'to-day—the little . boy leaves his body lying in the library only, and his mind sails away into;the wonderful land of fancy, and for a happy hour he is master of' the world and all that in it lies. Never again will he quite return to the' narrowness of his upbringing. Most others, I suppose, can remember in our youth pictures which' opened for us the doors of worlds unrealised. But even though they could work this fairy magic, how poor was the picture of our young days. I can remember that my whole Idea of India as . a country was based on a mean and contemptible wood ; cut ■ depicting a black man, a palm or two, and, I ttiink, a top-hatted and frock--coated missionary—and I learnt more of the outside world from the treasures brought home by gruff but- on the whole kindly sailormen, than I did from all : the. pictures then within my range of vision.

How different is an imaginative child's fortune to-day ; the magic carpet of art will carry him at will to any country of the world. Not only so, but even the people who teach us, or think that they do, are, I am told, ready to leave our dry geography books on the shelf, and to let us teach ourselves the wonders of the world from posters such as these, which first excite our desire for foreign clime, and then suggest to us the best means of transporting our corporeal bodies over sea and air and land. Much -might be said as to the value of travel posters, as,a decoration for many parts of our drab modern cities, much no doubt also of their place in the great advertising movement which is doing' so much to link up trade in all ■ the countries of the world. But to me the chief value of pictures such as these, especially if they are admitted to a place on the walls of our •schools, is the fact that they will furnish for countless children a door into the land of. fancy, which as long as they live will open fpr them again and again and give them refreshment and peace.