Beginning January 21st, Hopkins Grammar School Alum Jim Lapides '70, shares a small part of his impressive poster collection with the Hopkins community in the Keator Gallery.
Jim Lapides '70, owner of International Poster Gallery in Boston, MA, has been kind enough to share with Hopkins a glimpse into his vast collection of vintage posters from around the world, in an exhibition titled, "Timeless Images: Poster Classics 1890-1969." At the public opening on Thursday January 21st, and at the student opening on Friday, January 22, Mr. Lapides shared his passion for posters in two fascinating gallery talks, in which he explained some of the history of the printing process as well as the evolution of the medium from the 1890's to today.
Click here to see a photo gallery of the public and student openings.The following is Mr. Lapides gallery introduction to the exhibition, but we encourage you to come and see the exhibition for yourself on view through March 5, 2010.
Timeless Images: Poster Classics 1890-1969
From the collection of Jim Lapides, HGS '70
Owner of International Poster Gallery, BostonThe birth of the color lithographic poster in the late 19th century was one of the most visible innovations of the Industrial Age. Technically perfected in the 1880s, the poster quickly ushered in a modern era of advertising, touting everything from bicycles, spirits and cabarets to travel, fashion and political movements. Posters sought to capture the attention and the earnings of a burgeoning urban middle class.
During the 1890s, called the Belle Epoque in France, a poster craze came into full bloom. In 1891, Toulouse-Lautrec's first poster, Moulin Rouge, elevated the status of the poster to fine art, transforming the boulevards of Paris into the "art gallery of the street." French poster exhibitions, magazines, collecting clubs and galleries proliferated to satisfy the public's love affair with the poster. "Postermania" soon spread to major cities from Moscow to Chicago and would last until the end of the decade.
The poster craze of the 19th century was just the first chapter in the advertising poster's remarkable development. The organic and romantic flourishes of the Art Nouveau style in the Belle Epoque quickly yielded to graphic approaches tuned to the more hurried world of the automobile and the modern corporation. It them would take on a new and central role during Work War I, and after the war it would adapt to a dynamic Machine Age in the streamlined form of Art Deco. The poster again went to war in the 1940s, and afterwards it adjusted to the Baby Boom, the rise of the multi-national corporation, and television.
Our show ends with the Psychedelic Sixties, a time when counterculture artists found inspiration in the dream-like quality of Art Nouveau. At the end of its golden era, the poster had come full circle.
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Located on Boston’s Newbury Street since 1994,
International Poster Gallery is one of the leading vintage poster galleries in the world. The gallery’s collection features fine advertising posters from 1890 to the present, primarily from Italy, France, Switzerland, Russia, the Netherlands, and the United States. The Gallery’s exhibitions have been reviewed in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Worth Magazine and the Financial Times. For more information visit
www.internationalposter.com.
Jim Lapides ’70 HGS majored in Art History at Yale and received an MBA from Harvard in 1979. By the early ‘90s he became the largest collector of Italian posters in the United States and opened the gallery to embrace his love of posters from around the globe. He is currently writing a book on posters from the Golden Age of Travel, 1883–1939.
Timeless Images: Poster Classics 1890-1969 will be on view at the Keator Gallery from January 22 through March 5, 2010. Open Monday–Friday, 8am–4pm.
