Poster) Pierre Bonnard. (French, 1867-1947).

¶ … poster) Pierre Bonnard. (French, 1867-1947). La Revue Blanche (the White Review). (1894)

Art Analysis: La Revue Blanche (the White Review) by Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) was a French artist primarily associated with the avant-garde artists of the Post-Impressionist Parisian School of painting. His 1894 La Revue Blanche (the White Review) was a poster designed to promote a Parisian periodical that published work by cutting-edge writers of the late 19th century. "This and Bonnard's other posters bear many of the same design hallmarks: unmodulated color, a playful depiction of flattened space, and a decorative handling of silhouettes and textures" that would later come to characterize most popular art deco works, and is often associated with the Moulin Rouge posters created by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Wye, 2004, p.32). The comparison with Lautrec is fitting given that Bonnard was also noted for creating artwork for performances or magazines, such as this one for the White Review.

Bonnard did not see the commercial demands of print as incongruous with his artistic sensibility. Pierre Bonnard allied himself with what became known as the Nabis (prophetic) group of Parisian Post-Impressionists. They were committed to a "greater connection between art and everyday life through a synthesis of fine art and ordinary subjects" (Wye, 2004, p.32). "He tried just about every artistic activity. Like other members of the influential group of painters known as the Nabis, he believed in what he later called 'popular production'" (Brenson 1989). No work was too great or too small, nothing was sneered at. Bonnard "designed birth announcements, concert programs, magazine covers, theater posters and screens" (Brenson 1989)

His first commissioned work was an advertisement for champagne. "France-Champagne is the famous 1891 poster -with its young woman as effervescent as Champagne and the sickle-shaped letter 'C' ready to cut the ribbon of her dress - that established Bonnard's reputation" (Brenson 1989). He followed with theater programs, exhibition announcements, sheet music, and book and journal illustrations such as this one, along with his own individually issued prints.

Bonnard's primary aesthetic influences were Japanese woodblock prints which accounts for the flat textures and perspective of La Revue Blanche (the White Review). The print shows the beautiful, detailed face of a beautiful female Parisian aristocrat with pale eyes and a shapely nose that casts an alluring, slightly off-center and mysterious gaze at a point just slightly off-center from the viewer's position in relation to the print. Her slender form and thick black ruffled coat are flat and black and evidently from the ink of a woodprint. They stand in stark and striking contrast to her detailed face. Her towering hat is a similar contrast in darkness and light, starkness and detail. The hat is only a vague shape but the small white flowers are extremely well-crafted and detailed.

Observed one contemporary art critic for the New York Times: "Bonnard's poster for La Revue Blanche in 1894, with the shadowy elegance of its tall Parisienne, her body looming behind a masklike face that seems as discardable as paper, is a dazzling and disconcerting fin-de-siecle icon" (Brenson 1989). Off center from the beautiful woman stands a small, dwarfish creature, the height of a child. His face is deformed, almost like a circus freak, and he gestures rudely with his thumb at the woman. It is uncertain if he is doing this with approval or disapproval. The dwarf's gesture is crude and impolite, given that he is openly pointing at the woman. His necktie also seems to mark his status as lower-class, as is the fact that he seems to be picking his teeth with his other hand. The woman holds a magazine in her hand, evidently the Review that the drawing is designed to publicize. She seems unaware or untroubled by the pointing thumb. In the background hover the many names of other publications in an impressionistic, sparsely depicted drawing of a newsstand, from which evidently the fashionable beauty has selected as her choice. There is also a looming, dark figure in the background that subsumes most of the dwarf's shape, except for his hands, necktie, and face. This figure may be the newsstand vendor, or simply a passer-by in the distance or perhaps simply a shadow. The darkness of the background figure reduces the dwarf's character to his ugly face, rude gestures, and rough clothing. The darkness of background shape makes the woman's beautiful face and eyes even more evident.