RECENT
ARTICLES
& APPEARANCES
Page 2
On
Collecting Posters . . .
from 
Poster Children
Posted 2002-08-12
Although the poster dealer Gail Chisholm has been in the business for
three decades, you can still find her lurking around Paris on Wednesdays
at 4 A.M., making a deal for a placard or two. "It's when they do
the trade-over-you know, when they take down the hoardings. Sometimes
they'll give you one of the old ones." Of course, the majority of
the five thousand or so original posters at the CHISHOLM GALLERY (55 W.
17th St.; 6th floor; 243-8834) never graced metro or kiosk. They came
from private collectors, who have been amassing posters since color lithography
caused a sensation in the late nineteenth century, and from factories
and warehouses, where, believe it or not, overlooked posters still turn
up. "They're mostly French; the Italians were wonderfully dismissive
of poster collecting. Their attitude was 'Posters? With our art?' "
Chisholm says, surrounded by a hundred years' worth of ads for wine and
bicycles and travel and trains, which are on display as part of the gallery's
current exhibition, "Summer Pastimes." Asked to pick a favorite,
Chisholm eventually settles on a turn-of-the-century advertisement for
Absinthe Supérieure ($6,000) featuring a portly peasant settling
down for a sip and a puff. (His pipe smoke spells out "C'est ma santé.")
Pressed further, she points out a nineteen-fifties poster designed by
David Kline for T.W.A. that depicts cat's-eye sunglasses floating over
a highly abstract rendering of Collins Avenue in Miami Beach ($850).
