Posters American Style

By Therese Thau Heyman

Book Overview

Although the last twenty years have brought increased awareness of the force and significance of posters, this book is the first to focus exclusively on those created in the United States. Featured here are 120 enticing posters created by some of the most popular American artists and graphic designers of the last hundred years - including Will Bradley, Ben Shahn, Robert Rauschenberg, Rupert Garcia, Georgia O'Keeffe, Wes Wilson, Norman Rockwell, Victor Moscoso, and the Guerrilla Girls - as well as splendid works by less familiar artists. The plate section is divided into five categories that address the social, commercial, political, and cultural roles of posters: American Events, Designed to Sell, Patriots and Protestors, Advice for Americans, and Sports. Persuasive images such as these continue to play an integral part in almost every aspect of American life. Biographical entries on the artists, a concise guide to postermaking terms, a bibliography, and both subject and chronological indexes serve to make this volume an invaluable reference tool.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810927802
• ISBN13: 9780810927803
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: ABRAMS
• Length: 191 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful and valuable.

An exquisite collection of mostly American posters. Most are from the last century, with a healthy sampling from WWI and WWII, as well as sampling of rock art, commercial posters, and sports posters. A great strenth of the book is the attention it devotes to the representations and self-representations of women and ethnic minorities. Some of the most powerful pieces in the book are the many protest posters from the 1960s and 1970s. The book offers minimal text to analyze the work; instead concentrating on high quality prints from an excellent and wide-ranging assortment of American posters. A valuable and beautiful fragment of history.

Way Cool book.

This is a great book. It showcases posters and other visual messages from sports, government, counterculture and activist groups, and advertising from the late 1800's to the present. Some of the posters are very illuminating of the times in which they were created, and they show how our societal ideas have evolved (for better or worse) since. It is fascinating and enjoyable reading.