Mr Benjamin, is this poster a copy?

Exhibits A and B for today’s argument come from eBay.

This is a London Transport poster by Abram Games from 1968.

Abram Games London Transport poster repro

Except it also isn’t.  Here’s the description from the listing itself.

“Sightsee London” by Abram Games 1968. This is an authentic LT poster printed by Sir Joseph Causton & Sons in 1971 for sale in the LT shop and carries the line “this is a reproduction of a poster designed for London Transport” – it is not a recent reprint.

So, I don’t want to buy it because it says all over the bottom that it’s a reprint.   An old reprint, true, almost as old as the original poster, but still a copy.

There’s another one too, a rather natty bit of swinging 60s design.

1960s London Transport poster repro

And I’m not going to buy that one either, for just the same reason.

But why should this matter?  It’s still an old poster.  Come to that, why don’t I buy a giclee print of whatever poster I fancy instead of spending time and money in pursuit of the originals?

Mr Crownfolio asked that question the other day, and I didn’t have a good answer.  If we buy posters for the good design and because they are lovely images to have around, a reprint, of any kind, shouldn’t be an issue.  I could have this Lewitt Him for £30 from Postal Heritage Prints,

Lewitt Him post early GPO vintage poster 1941

which is considerably cheaper than the amount we actually paid for an original copy.  And yet I still don’t want it.  Why is that?

There are some relatively straightforward answers, like the thrill of the chase and the bargain, and that the originals will make much better investments.  That’s all true, but there’s more at stake here than that.  And to explain it, I may have to use some theory (but don’t worry, there will be nice pictures as well along the way).

Back in 1936, the critic and writer Walter Benjamin (in an often-quoted and pleasingly short essay called ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’) argued that the original work of art had an ‘aura’ – its presence, uniqueness, history and associations.  Now this, for me, is what an original poster offers.  Its past life, its direct connection with the artist and their times, its apparent authenticity compared to a giclee print, all of these make a poster more interesting than a later copy.

F K Henrion, Post Office Savings Bank poster, 1944
F K Henrion, Post Office Savings Bank poster, 1944

Seems sensible, but it would have had Benjamin foaming at the mouth with fury.  He believed that even fine art works would lose their aura once high quality printing and photographic reproduction could make them accessible to everyone; while modern creations like films and photographs (and, by implication, posters) would have no aura at all, because there could be no original.

McKnight Kauffer, Explorers Prefer Shell, vintage poster 1934
McKnight Kauffer, Explorers Prefer Shell, 1934

And without an aura, he thought that art would have to change entirely.  Being of a Marxist persuasion, he thought that it would have to be about politics instead of reverence for the individual work.  Which is why he’d be so infuriated by my faffing about, worried about which London Transport posters are original and which are not.  Somehow (the mighty and indistructible powers of capitalism in all probability), we have managed to transfer all of our myths and beliefs about individual art works on to these reproduced, never-original copies.  Benjamin must be spitting tacks.

John Tunnard Holiday School Print 1947
John Tunnard, Holiday, School Print, 1947

The sad thing is, he came quite close to being right.  In a very British, watered-down way, ideas like the ‘School Prints’ series were an attempt to put his theories into practice.  In the late 1940s, fine and avant-garde artists including Henry Moore, Picasso and Braque created lithographs that were designed for reproduction and offered to every school in the country, making the best of modern art available to everyone who wanted it (nice article here if you want to know more).  These artworks were designed to be reproduced, in theory infinite in number, just as Benjamin would have liked them to be.  This should have been art without an aura, easily encountered on the walls of schools and hospitals rather than art galleries, in a political gesture very typical of the egalitarian post-war period.

Michael Rothenstein School Print Essex Wood Cutters, 1946
Michael Rothenstein, Essex Wood Cutters, School Print 1946

But, of course, it didn’t end up as he had hoped; we now collect them, value them, treasure them for their limited availability.  The Henry Moore is worth close on £1000.  If you can get hold of a copy of course.

The School Prints were not alone either.  The late 40s and early 1950s were a Benjamin-esque frenzy of art for all.  Lyons Tea Shops commissioned prints from modern artists between 1947 and 1955 with much the same motivation. (Like the School prints they are now valuable, collectable unique items.  There is a slew of them on offer today at the Christies auction, as mentioned a few weeks ago.)

john nash landscape with bathers lyons print 1947
John Nash, Landscape with Bathers, Lyons print, 1947

And I’ve already blogged about the way that London Transport Shell and the GPO commissioned fine artists and avant-garde designers to design their posters both before and after World War Two with some of the same motivations.  Art was no longer the preserve of the privileged, it needed to be made available to everyone in this new, modern, reproducible world.  All these prints and posters were Benjamin’s theories made flesh.

Night Mail Pat Keely vintage GPO poster
Pat Keely, Night Mail, GPO, 1939

But each and every one of these objects are now unique, collectable, valuable.  They’ve all acquired an aura.  And so I do mind whether or not I get a print, whether my poster was printed in 1968 or 1971.  I am, frankly, a lousy revolutionary.

Two other points to bear in mind.  One is that I used to work in a museum, so there are other reasons for collecting old things as well.  I’ll blog about them one day too, when I’ve articulated what on earth they are.

I also need to admit we’ve bought a couple of these reprints before now. Like this Carol Barker.

Carol Barker London for children vintage poster London Transport 1968

(I’d like to blame this on initial naivete, and some slightly dodgy eBay listings, but I think lack of attention to detail may have had something to do with it as well.  Repeat after me: I must read descriptions more carefully.)

Once again, the reprint is only a few years later than the ‘original’ but it still wrong and we’ll probably sell it on at some point.  Walter Benjamin would be very disappointed in me; I just can’t help seeing auras.

Posters, posters everywhere, but not a lot to buy

Well, it’s here.  For the first time under the new rules (which are, as ranted about previously, a minimum lot value of £800) it’s the Christies May vintage poster auction.  And, unsurprisingly, it’s not for me any more.

There are lots of cruise posters, some French posters, a fair smattering of Olympic posters, and lots more besides, but very little that I’d actually want to buy.

Perhaps the most interesting one for me is this Hans Unger Safari poster, mainly because I’ve never seen it before

Hans Unger Safari poster from Christies

This may also be true for Christies, because they don’t seem to have a date or a publisher for it.  Anyone out there with any ideas?

There are also five lots of Lyons teashop prints, which you don’t often see, although I’m not sure whether this is because they don’t often come up, or because they more often make their appearances at Modern British Art sales.  This 1947 one by William Scott is probably my favourite,

William Scott Lyons print christies

with Barnett Freedman a close second.

Barnett Freedman Lyons print from Christies

It’s worth noting that not even Barnett Freedman can make himself worth the minimum lot value, and for the estimate of £800-1,200 you get two Freedman prints for your teashop.

A few of the usual suspects are present, like these pair of McKnight Kauffers (estimates £1,000-£1,500 and £2,000-£3,000 respectively)

Magicians prefer Shell McKnight Kauffer vintage poster Christies

Lubrication by Shell McKnight Kauffer vintage poster Christies

There is also this Bawden City of London Transport poster (estimate £700-£900)

Edward Bawden vintage London Transport poster City of London

Interestingly, this comes with six other London Transport posters when I would have thought that it would hold that value perfectly well by itself.  I’d also be curious to know whether one of them is its pair poster, as this half is coming up more and more, but you never see the text side for sale.  Perhaps I’d better ask Christies.

Further to yesterday’s post, there is also a David Gentleman pair poster,

David Gentleman pair poster London Transport

For your £700-900, you also get its other half and two posters by the very under-rated Sheila Robinson, so a good helping of Englishness to be had there.

From the other side of the Channel, design-wise, this has also appeared.

Jean Dupas LPTB Richmond vintage poster Christies

I wonder if it was lured out by the Antiques Roadshow coverage.  The estimate (£3,000-£5,000) is pretty much what they gave, so it will be interesting to see how that does.

In other news, the lot value restrictions haven’t entirely kept out the kitch as this

Mervyn Stuart Butlins vintage poster from Christies

has an estimate of £600-800 despite being a bit grubby.  I’ll be surprised.

And this Carvosso will probably go for at least its £800-£1,200 estimate for its curiosity/ephemera value.

Carvosso 1966 World Cup poster Christies

While I admire its attempt to inject glamour into the roll-call of Manchester, Middlesborough, White City, I still don’t like it very much.

This, meanwhile, is just delightful.

D W Burley Chessington Zoo poster Christes

It’s by D W Burley but also isn’t dated.  But it’s still not £600-£800 worth of nice to me.  So I shan’t be bidding.

This post is already far too long, but it’s also my duty to point out, as a grumpy under-bidder, that this Henrion went off on eBay yesterday for a mere £139.

Henrion punch poster from eBay

One thing I really miss is knowing who has bought things.  In the good old days of eBay, most of the time you’d be able to see who’d beaten you to a poster like this.  But now – unless you’re selling it yourself – everyone has a cloak of invisibility which no computer wizardry can pull aside.  And with Onslow’s now online rather than in the eccentric Festival-modern hall at Marble Arch, I can’t even go there and see for myself wh0’s won things.  There’s no reason why I should know of course, but it’s still annoying.

Life (and design) During Wartime

Just because posters were produced at a time when some of the very best designers were working, it doesn’t mean that they were all great design, or even interesting.  This thought was brought on by a collection of posters on sale in Lewes next week.

The idea – 20 lots of wartime and post-war HMSO posters – sounds wonderful.  The reality is, sadly, rather less appealing.  The vast majority of the posters are pictures of tanks, aeroplanes or people fighting.  Dramatic, probably effective, but not for me.  Even the home front ones are anonymous, and more social history than art:

Let Your Shopping Help Our Shipping vintage WW2 poster (lot 591)

There are a collection of H.M. Batemans as well,

Don't be Fuelish vintage WW2 poster (lot 599)

But to my mind, the best posters are a set of anonymous recruiting posters for the ATS, which I’ve never seen before.

vintage WW2 ATS recruiting poster (lot 606)

which are a rather nice mix of photomontage and snappy type.  If anyone has any info on the designer, do let me know; even the Imperial War Museum have them down as anonymous.

vintage WW2 ATS recruiting poster

But I still don’t even like these enough to go to the trouble of putting an absentee bid in and then, somehow, getting them transported from Lewes to Crownfolio HQ.

However, they’re still a salutary reminder about the quality of graphic design in the war vs the quantity.  I, certainly, have a tendency to imagine a bombed-out London plastered with one beautiful poster after another, all the work of Abram Games, Lewitt-Him or James Fitton.  The reality, however, probably looked nothing like that, and most walls were covered with exhortations, pictures of planes, speeches from Churchill and rather average illustrations.  The ones we cherish now were the exception, not the rule.

Still, some of them were great.  In the course of researching the auction lots, I came across this, a Henrion I’d never seen before.

Henrion artists and russia ww2 vintage poster

Now if that comes up for auction, even in the Orkneys, I’ll be making a serious bid.

Four posters in search of a story

I’ve always been interested in the afterlife of objects – how things survive long enough to become collectibles or heirlooms or even national treasures.  It’s generally a story of chance and – quite often – being so lost and overlooked that no one bothers to throw you away. It’s also a story that isn’t often told as part of design history; once an object has been created and made, that’s normally the end of it.  But often what happens next is at least as interesting, and can also be very revealing about how we appreciate, or disregard, the objects around us.

So, following on from yesterday’s post about just how little survives, here are a few of our posters with the tales of how they made it through to the twenty-first century.

Tom Eckersley Post Early GPO poster
Tom Eckersley, Post Early for GPO, 1955, Crown Folio 15″ x 10″
Saved by a man who went into his local post office and asked them to keep for him all of the posters and publicity material that they had finished with.  (I will write more about this one of these days as it’s worth a whole post in its own right.)

Henrion London Underground Vintage poster Changing Guard
F H K Henrion, Changing of the Guard for London Transport, 1956, Double Royal 40″ x 25″
Kept by a tutor in graphic design who used it in his teaching.

Mount Evans no smoking poster
Mount/Evans, Anti-Smoking poster for COI, 1965-ish, Double Crown 30″ x 20″
Bought at auction but I believe it came from the designers’ own archive.

McKnight Kauffer ARP vintage poster
ARP Poster, Edward McKnight Kauffer, 1938, Crown Folio 15″ x 10″
Found in the roof of a scout hut.  The air rifle pellet holes had to be restored…

Patrick Bogue from Onslows also mentioned in passing that he once found original railway poster artwork being used as insulation in a loft space.  Can anyone better that?