Posters for the People: Art of the WPA 50 Postcards [Hardcover]

This is a great compilation of WPA posters. It provides a nice link historicaly between Art Deco and the silkscreen posters of the 1960's 1970's rock era. I was pleased to see some woodcut examples as well. Anyone with an interest in graphic design, modern art history, and the interaction of art and social/civic issues should buy this book. Posters for the People: The Art of the WPA

Ben Darling

A timely publication to tie in with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the New Deal and it's a worthwhile addition to the only other book on the subject: Christopher DeNoon's Posters of the WPA.

Ennis Carter has edited a lovely book of almost five hundred posters, divided into twelve sections. Though there were thousands produced the selection here will give you a good idea about the style and themes. Having looked through the book several times I feel there a couple creative styles shown in the posters: the solid color modernist ones with their angled headlines in geometric type promoting industry and the more whimsical folksy ones for art shows and plays. All of them reflect what is possible with the cheap silkscreen process so there is an absence of photos or anything that required a graduated tone. Fortunately the technique more or less makes artists and designers go for something simple and direct using two or three colors.

Most of the posters use silkscreen though I was surprised to see some that were captioned as `Hand painted on board', surely there weren't many produced like this. The cultural event ones had to present a lot of type detail for name of the event, players, location and ticket prices whereas the ones that could be called propaganda presented a straightforward message: Careless talk costs lives!

The book's production is first class with good paper and printed with a 175 screen and nicely all the posters have a drop shadow which lifts them off the page. I think Christopher DeNoon's book (out of print but worth searching out because the price seems to rise yearly) is the one I prefer, though it has a lot fewer posters, 280 in color, it benefits from several excellent essays about the WPA and background to the times plus it's beautifully designed.

Both books will probably be the only ones ever published with a big selection of WPA posters and they both cover the subject beautifully. Dover have published a book of posters with a CD-ROM: 60 Great WPA Posters Platinum DVD and Book (Electronic Clip Art) with a poster a page which makes them bigger than anything in the Carter or DeNoon books.

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

This is a wonderful book. The reproductions are well printed and give you a feel for the silk screen process that was used for printing most of the original posters. The large format allows the reader to better visualize the posters and to imagin how they may have made an impact on their first readers.
I have access to Posters of the WPA by Christopher Denoon at the Denver Public Library. I will probably buy this book in the near future since it also is a well made and comprehensive book. However, I believe the Posters for the People surpasses it because of its larger format and its inclusion of many more posters.
These posters were propaganda for the New Deal FDR was spearheading. But the patriotism expressed by the posters is in not the "Uncle Sam Wants You!" style. Instead, their appeal is domestic, industrial, often rural, cultural (mostly Anglo). frequently moralistic and low key. Their core message is this: By working together in a time of national crisis (c.1929 -1939), we can improve our common good.
Maybe we should try this in 2009.