When Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and his colleagues were designing posters back in the late 1800s, they didn’t expect them to end up framed on gallery walls. Lautrec, Jules Cheret, Alphonse Mucha, and dozens of other Parisian artists–who had been hired by candy companies, hatmakers, tire manufacturers, theaters, music halls, and so on–were just designing ads.
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Today those posters, large and small, are still collector’s items. More than 100 of them are on display in Merrill Chase’s current exhibit of vintage posters, “The Triumph of the Poster,” curated by Sanford and Michael Gallfer. The show–divided between the Water Tower gallery and the two suburban galleries–includes large posters (as big as four by six feet) and small ones (the smallest is about the size of a letter). Many of the smaller posters were originally part of “The Masters of the Poster” series. There are also menu covers, song sheets, and illustrations from political and literary journals.
The posters on the walls at Merrill Chase, like those in other galleries and private collections, never lined the streets in Paris; collectors didn’t sponge posters off the walls. “The glue was just as good then as it is now,” says Sanford. They were overruns, extra copies that were never used either because the printer made extras to sell to collectors or because the person pasting them up stopped short.
In the midwest, Sanford says, Merrill Chase Galleries have had the largest presence in vintage posters over the last 20 years, and this show is probably the biggest they have put together. In fact, says Sanford, “it’s probably the largest collection of this merchandise on display in a [commercial] gallery in the world.”
“The Triumph of the Poster” runs through April 30 at the Merrill Chase Galleries at Water Tower Place, 845 N. Michigan, the Woodfield Mall at Route 53 and Golf Road in Schaumburg, and the Oakbrook Center Mall at Route 83 and 22nd Street in Oak Brook. Gallery hours are 10 to 9 weekdays, 10 to 6 Saturdays, and vary on Sundays. For more information, call 337-6600, 330-0300, or 572-0225.
