Someone pointed out to me recently that travel agents are a diminishing breed, their services replaced by doing it yourself online and hard economic times. This leads me to the thought that the travel poster may be an endangered art form.The posters shown here date from the years between the First and Second World Wars. Catastrophe was brewing beyond those horizons, but you would never guess it from these specimens.
Sailing, swimming, and tennis beneath cloudless skies lull the mind as much as they refresh the body. What kind of person would waste their summer plotting to assassinate an Archduke or invade a sleepy little country like Poland? There are no clues here. Stylistically, the posters are of their time but a bird flying low over the Mediterranean today might notice little significant change.Images from the collection of the Museum of Applied
Culture, Vienna.
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9 comments:
Maybe all government warfare departments should have travel posters prominently placed to recall the wonders of the world so they will cherish and protect them! Oh, just a thought. I like the Riviera poster the best. Great composition.
Speaking of the Riviera, the first poster (by Anonymous) from 1910 promotes the "Deustche Riviera", purported to be somewhere in Austria. I bet we can't find that on any map! That's advertising for you.
The German Travel Office used the phrase "Deutsche Riviera" as a slogan (you still saw it in advertising in the 60's) in the sense of "find Shangra-la, the perfect vacation spot." It's a catchword for a sunny spot with little rain. New Yorkers have a phrase like that, don't they? ... it's on the tip of my tongue ... help me, Jane!
The first word that comes to my mind is "Bermuda." How interesting this gets. Travel enticements are a kind of fantasy literature anyway.
Oh yes, I think you've hit the nail on the head. Agencies have to play on our fantasies, because if I stop and think about it logically, I find that the bother of packing and planning often keeps me from wanting to leave. I suppose I'm a bit of a homebody (or perhaps my fantasies are alive and well right here, who knows?).
Gosh, these travel posters remind me of a past with steamer trunks and ships crossing the Atlantic and the Orient Express and post... so different from today!
Art, somehow the cruises of today seem less romantic, or perhaps it's just that the photographs don't convey the same atmosphere.
Each one of these pieces I can absolutely fall in love with!
Aly Beth, I agree. It was hard to choose, so I limited them to the Mediterranean, so it would be coherent.
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