A POSTER BY A.M.CASSANDRE

THE POSTER AS AN "ADVERTISING MACHINE"

The Invention of a New Art

Adolphe-Marie Mouron, known as Cassandre, revolutionized the art of the poster by radically transforming it: from decorative illustration inherited from the 19th century, it became under his impetus a true "announcing machine," an expression he coined in 1929 that perfectly summarizes his creative philosophy.

This mechanistic vision, profoundly influenced by the industrial aesthetics of the interwar period and Le Corbusier's theories, definitively breaks the traditional link between the poster and decorative painting. "The poster is no longer a painting but becomes an announcing machine," he proclaims in L'Art international d'aujourd'hui, thus formulating the conceptual foundations of modern graphic design.

The Functional Trinity

Cassandre theorizes his revolution with remarkable scientific clarity. According to him, the poster must simultaneously solve three fundamental problems that constitute its functional trinity:

1. OPTICAL - The poster must first be seen. This obvious fact conceals a complex science of visual perception: "This visibility depends not on a simple contrast of colors but indeed on a relationship of values, exalted by a clash of forms, a formal accident." Cassandre thus develops a scientific approach to visual attraction, systematically using regulatory layouts and geometric proportions.

2. GRAPHIC - The poster must be immediately understood. Cassandre compares its functioning to railway signals: "Railroad tracks have not been marked with signs bearing the words 'please stop if you please.' Colored signals have been judiciously preferred, sorts of ideograms infinitely more expressive and faster to read." This analogy reveals his conception of the poster as universal language, transcending linguistic barriers through pure visual efficiency.

3. POETIC - The poster must move durably. This dimension, revolutionary in the advertising field, radically distinguishes Cassandre from his contemporaries: "Image linked to a word (or a name), the goal of a poster is to create around this image-word a series of very simple associations of ideas and associations of ideas that could not be forgotten."

The Architecture of Emotion

This poetic approach transforms Cassandre into an "architect of emotion." Trained by the study of Vitruvius and passionate about classical architecture, he transposes to the poster the principles of monumental construction. Each creation obeys a rigorous regulatory layout, guaranteeing that geometric harmony which immediately strikes the eye.

But Cassandre surpasses the purely technical approach to reach the symbolic dimension. His masterpieces (The Woodcutter, Nord-Express, L'Étoile du Nord) function as visual metaphors: the woodcutter embodies the creative force transforming matter, the train expresses the poetry of modern speed, the star invites to the metaphysics of travel.

The Primacy of the Letter

Cassandre develops a revolutionary vision of the text/image relationship that still influences our contemporary practices. Unlike his contemporaries who consider the letter as an accessory decorative element, he makes it the conceptual heart of the poster: "It is around the text that the drawing must revolve and not the reverse... Because the poster is not a painting. It is above all a word."

This conviction leads him to design his own typographic characters (Bifur, Acier, Peignot) and to theorize a radical reform of Western writing. His obsessive research for "typographic liberation" anticipates by forty years contemporary digital revolutions.

Efficiency Against Art for Art's Sake

Cassandre fully assumes the commercial function of the poster, refusing traditional hierarchies between pure art and applied art. This position, revolutionary at the time, forges his modernity: "It is not asked to make itself loved or understood, only to make itself undergone. It is to Painting what rape is to love."

This provocative metaphor reveals his conception of the poster as an art of immediate efficiency, opposing traditional aesthetic contemplation. The poster must "shoot the retina" of the passerby, according to his own expression, creating that visual shock indispensable to memorizing the message.

Method Against Inspiration

Cassandre revolutionizes graphic creation methods by substituting scientific method for romantic inspiration. His systematic use of the golden ratio, regulatory layouts and architectural perspective transforms the artisan poster artist into an image engineer.

This methodological approach, rare among artists of his time, becomes the norm of contemporary design. Current "design systems," brand guidelines, agile methods exactly take up his scientific approach to creation.

The Universality of Visual Language

Cassandre demonstrates that aesthetic excellence and commercial efficiency are inseparable. His masterpieces simultaneously touch the cultivated elite and the general public, proving that one can revolutionize visual codes without sacrificing popular impact.

This synthesis, exceptional in art history, perhaps constitutes his most precious contribution to modern design. His creations, exhibited from Tokyo to New York, instantly touch audiences of all cultures, demonstrating the universality of the visual language he invented.

Contemporary Legacy

Sixty years after his disappearance, the Cassandrian vision still irrigates our modernity. His conceptual approach to visual communication prefigures our digital practices: same search for immediate efficiency, same synthesis between information and emotion, same necessity to capture attention in a saturated environment.

The invention of storytelling with Dubonnet, the systematization of visual identities, revolutionary typographic research: all these innovations continue to inspire contemporary creators confronted with the challenges of modern communication.

Conclusion: Eternal Modernity

Cassandre has bequeathed us much more than a style: a method, an ethic, a global vision of visual communication that transcends epochs and technologies. His fundamental lesson still resonates: excellence is born from the synthesis between technical rigor and poetic ambition.

In a world where everything accelerates, his creative slowness becomes a lesson of resistance against the tyranny of immediacy. His example reminds us that to revolutionize is first to master existing codes to invent the future.

This vision, formulated with the genius of an absolute creator, constitutes Cassandre's most beautiful legacy: having shown us that applied art can achieve universality when it simultaneously aims for beauty and efficiency. This is perhaps the most beautiful definition of modern design.

HIS VISION OF THE POSTER

"A Poster is to be viewed on the street. It should integrate architectural groups and enrichen the spreading facades. It should enliven not the individual advertisement board or building, but rather the huge blocks of stone and the vast area as a whole".

A.M.Cassandre,

Translated by Kikuko Egashira

"A Poster unlike a painting, is not and is not meant to be, a work easily distinguished by its - manner - a unique specimen conceived to satisfy the demanding tastes of a single more or less enlightened art lover. It is meant to be a mass-produced object existing in thousands of copies like a fountain pen or automobile. Like them, it is designed to answer certain strictly material needs. It must have a commercial function. I need not emphasize that my principal and constant care is to renew myself ceaselessly. Plenty of very well-intentioned people ask me to do posters - in the style of "Au Bucheron" - as if I were free to continue turning out electrotype plates of a design once it had found favor with the public and become established ! Such repetitions are out of the question. Besides, they would amount to a kind of suicide for the artist. Each poster is a new experience, or rather a new battle to wage and win. Success does not come to the artist who tries to cajole the onlooker with soft words. It comes to the artist who sweeps down on the public like a hussar, or rather ( if I am allowed this image) who rapes it."

A.M.Cassandre,

Translated by Michael Taylor

"All my life, I have been solicited by two innate tendencies; a need for formal perfection, which had led me to pursue the work of a craftsman who knows where his duties and limits lie, and a burning thirst for a lyrical expression that aspires to free itself from all constraints. Contradictory impulses - and difficult ones to reconcile in this day and age. For the lyrical work of a contemporary artist aware of his own tragic destiny necessarily contains his pain, his anguish, his despair. Whereas an artisan’s work, which expresses essentially the joy of its own accomplishment, can only contain a faith in life and durability, an unambiguously optimistic affirmation. But how is one to attain this joyful serenity when one’s heart is filled with grief? My instinctive restraint and perhaps also my fear of indulging, almost reprehensibly, in narcissism have always prevented me from voicing my own despair lyrically. And yet lyricism, it now seems to me, is the only honest one."

A.M.Cassandre,

1960 AMC Mémento