Poster art is designed to be eye-catching, so you'd expect an exhibition of posters to make a bold statement. When the creators of the posters are artists of the caliber of Pierre Bonnard, Wassily Kandinsky and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, it's not surprising that their works are regarded as masterpieces of modern printmaking.
Examples of such artistry are included among the 50 turn-of-the-century posters, mostly from its own collection, that the Museum of Fine Arts has brought out on show for an exhibition titled "Poster Mania: The 1890s."Highlights of the exhibition are two of Toulouse-Lautrec's best known posters - for the cabaret Divan Japonais, and for the performer Aristide Bruant. The exhibition focuses on European and American posters of the 1890s, a period that's often called the "Golden Age" of the poster.
Poster art then was considered a democratic art, said Museum of Fine Arts curator Clifford Ackley. "Many artist of this period did not see designing posters as hack-work or as a secondary activity," he said. "Designing posters was, for them, one way of combining `high' and `low' art forms."