Synopses & Reviews
A successful poster has an unmistakable and immediate impact. Posters urge viewers to enlist, vote, join, buy, or boycott: "I Want You for U.S. Army", "Save the Planet", "Power to the People". This book, which accompanies a traveling exhibition opening in March 1998 at the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., is the first to focus exclusively on American posters, concentrating on the last 100 years.
Featured here are 120 posters by some of the most popular American artists and graphic designers of the period. Will Bradley, Ben Shahn, Robert Rauschenberg, Rupert Garcia, Wes Wilson, Georgia O'Keeffe, Norman Rockwell, and the Guerrilla Girls are represented, along with other, less familiar artists.
Therese Thau Heyman, guest curator of the related exhibition, draws fascinating conclusions about the impact of posters, their context in the history of visual communication, and how they challenge long-held conventions about the gap between high and low art. A discussion of the technological advances of the past century and biographies of the artists are also included, making the book a useful reference.