When it comes to contemporary street art – we’ve got our Banksy to lead the way. Whole walls have been removed to protect his work and even cash in on his fame.
Compare that with the paper posters of Bohemian Paris. How art, music and dance were promoted through public postings that helped make the careers of people like Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre Bonnard.
These French adverts weren’t designed to survive wind and rain for long but became so popular that they too were taken down and kept by those who appreciated them as works of art.
Opening at Bath’s Victoria Art Gallery this weekend is an exhibition featuring a whole collection of surviving posters.
It’s a display that brings the sights, sounds and delights of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s colourful and thrilling Bohemian Paris to modern-day Bath.
And it’s a bit of a scoop, as the gallery’s manager Jon Benington explains.
Good to see the gallery shop will be stocking a range of exhibition-linked goods including a richly-illustrated book of posters and accompanies the main gallery show.
I also hear the gallery has benefitted from people coming down to Bath for the Grayson Perry exhibition at the Holburne – at the other end of Great Pulteney Street.
Toulouse-Lautrec and the Masters of Montmartre opens on Saturday, February 15th and runs through to May 26.
More information about it and the rest of the Victoria Gallery’s offerings via www.victoriagal.org.uk
