Normandie

Avant-garde artists’ fascination with the major city, communications, technology and movement is reflected in one of modernity’s artistic mediums: the poster. Publicity swept through city streets to become the best showcase for products from a market economy. This new need to entice was resolved by modern poster artists as they combined utilitarian art with an avant-garde language. Cassandre, one of the great renovators of French graphic art and a trailblazer of the modern poster, represents in this design the icon of sea transport that has the capacity to join Europe and the beating city of New York. The Normandie was the largest ocean liner hitherto constructed and the pride of French engineering, as transmitted in this poster with subtlety and with the tricolour flag running through the composition, beyond the small ensign on the bow. The artist was able to blend the concepts of force and power with calm and elegance to appeal to the wealthy French tourist who sees in the new methods of transport a way of escaping the uncertainties of a Europe suffocating from the rise of totalitarianisms.

José Manuel Lara Oliveros