COMMERCIAL ART

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 75, 26 September 1933, Page 6

COMMERCIAL ART

ADVERTISING POSTERS

HIGH STANDARD AT HOME

In view of the general interest taken in the display of Commercial Art at tho Advertising and Marketing Exhibition, the collection was transferred to an address in The Strand, writes the London representative of "The Post."

No one today can complain that posters in this country disfigure the towns and countryside. A certain time each day is spent by Londoners in the company, as it were, of pictorial advertising,'.and any tiling crude or un-attractive-would be certain to do nioro harm than good to the particular products advertised. For instance, a few minutes'wait on the platform of. an underground station generally means the examination of the huge posters on the far side of the "track or tho smaller ones on tho platform side. Londonors have become critical, and anything crude or inartistic in these underground art galleries would be sure to cause a protest. In any case the standard has been set, and no advertiser would venture to invite invidious distinction by placing anything on the walls which had not beon done by a* craftsman. . . .

Again much has beon done by the Empire Marketing Board to raise' the standard of poster-advertising. The frames used by the board in London and suburbs and in various towns throughout Great Britain were designed by an artist, and skilled and acknoVledgod artists have always been employed to produce the pictures which were meant to encourage intcr-Imporial trade. Of the long lino of these pictorial appeals many of them can be recalled, and all of thorn have left a pleasant memory.

Some of the original drawings of-the, posters more or less well known to English people, on view at the.present exhibition, are typical of the trend of poster art today. For instance, Mr. F. C. Harrison brings to boar the same skill in painting a well-browned cake or a realistic mince-pie as he would in painting a bowl of flowers for an exhibition. The London Underground Railway has made great, use of art and original ideas for directing the attention of the public to-the facilities of travel provided by it. For the Zoo there are very fine' paintings of eagles and kangaroos; other animals and birds have been painted by Mr. Gregory Brown. Interesting localities of London are illustrated in Peter Pan style. A Peter Pan Map of Kensington Gardens is tho work of Mr. Mac Donald Gill, who provides similar maps for bthcr transport services, ono illustrating all tho Home counties served by the buses.

Railway companies have employed tho services of, ■ ninny of the leading artists for scenic posters. Mr. Leslie Carr is one. Mr. Charles Pears illustrates the interior of churches, and tho London and North-Kastern Railway lias long been famed for its depictions of cathedrals, ruined castles, •■inducts, and coastal scenes, painted by many famous artists, iiu-ludinp; Uoyal Academicians. Tho modernists and impressionist school of artists is also represented in advertising today.