Ever since they arrived, in the modern sense, in the 1890s, posters joined the tendency to break moulds and undermine the hierarchy of "fine art". And yet, since their function was usually to sell stuff, posters are stalked by paradox: commissioned by businessmen, their visual success enriched the very bourgeoisie whose aesthetic values many poster artists were trying to challenge.
Two exhibitions just opened in Barcelona, one dedicated to the modern poster pioneer Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the other to the local artist Ramón Casas, find themselves in the perfect setting since Barcelona is something of a cultural paradox itself. After all, this is a place where modernista mould-breakers like Gaudí relied entirely on prosperous industrialists for patronage. Gaudí's contemporary, Ramón Casas was surely - the pun is irresistible - the poster child forthis impulse: an artistfascinated by the edgy modernity from France, and yet thoroughly comfortable about relying on Barcelona's traditional burghers for his commissions.
Ramón Casas and the Poster at the Museum of Catalan History is, apart from anything else, a good opportunity to discover local talent beyond the famous triumvirate of Gaudí, Dalí and Miró. As this wide-ranging exhibition shows, Casas was a prodigiously gifted painter and draughtsman, producing scores of unsettlingly photographic charcoal portraits. All these skills he turned to the poster in 1898, after winning first prize in an advertising design competition launched by the Anis del Mono drinks company.
His studies are complex affairs in pencil, Chinese ink and pastel, with many a decorative flourish. One design ingeniously incorporates typography into the girl's shawl. It's fascinating to see how such details survivethe transition into colour lithography, achieving just the right balance of complexity alongside an inevitablesimplification.
Overall, though, this show tells us more about the debt that Casas owed to Toulouse-Lautrec and the Paris poster set, whom Casas never really surpasses. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the series of posters he designed for the café Els Quatre Gats. This establishment was founded by Casas himself, together with three other "cats", all fellow Barcelona artists. The building in the Gothic quarter, where you can still enjoy a drink, was designed by Josep Puig i Cadalfach. A glorious example of home-grown Catalan modernisme it may be, but both in its name and function, the four founders were consciously imitating the example of the Paris bohemian hang-out, Le Chat Noir.
Perhaps not surprisingly, given the pressures of patronage, Casas is at his best when working for his own interests, which gives the Els Quatre Gats poster series its vitality. One of them, "Sombras", advertises a shadow show. In the foreground, a kimono-swathed woman sets the japoniste tone, her profile providing depth to the audience in the background, represented by a jumble of hats and pipes.
Elsewhere in the Quatre Gats series is a poster depicting one of the café´s co-founders, the socialite Pere Romeu. Head turned to confront us, he sits at the bar in his flowing greatcoat with all the truculence of anAristide Bruant, while inthe background a briskly sketched mass of punters frenziedly wave their beer mugs. The impact is immediate: a wonderful contrast of individualised stillness and wild revelry.
This said, wild revelry hardly predominates in Casas' work, and many of his later posters slip into a disappointing staidness. As the 20th century got under way, Casas turned his back on the type of glam working-class girl that he had used in "Anis del Mono". Increasingly, his models resemble the refined daughters of his businessmen patrons, a traditional ideal of timeless beauty a world away from the fleshpots of Montmartre.
And it is there that we go now, across Barcelona's Port Vell to the slopes of Montjuic, where the Catalan National Museum of Art is showing one of only a handful of complete collections of Toulouse-Lautrec's posters.
At its entrance, the curators have confronted us with the Aristide Bruant series. Inevitably, familiarity with these huge posters has led to a degree of aura-loss, but it's not long before the aura begins to wear back on: the few strokes that form the aggressive face, the powerful, bulky figure pivoting around the red gash of his scarf.A master of reduction, Toulouse-Lautrec progresses through his triptych until Bruant is only seen from the back. In another poster, Bruant's back-view is reduced further: no mere silhouette, but what Toulouse-Lautrec knew instinctively as the iconic power of the brand.
Japonisme was the modern poster-maker's primary reference point. At its heart lay the concept of the "floating world", a place apart from common life, filled withrevelry and hedonism. Montmartre was surely sucha place, and Toulouse-Lautrec's wonderful "Divan japonais" pulses with compositional inventiveness: the near-abstraction of the orchestra pit with its few thrusting cello necks, while deep in the background Yvette Guilbert performs on stage, her head cut out of the picture.
Beyond all the other works - "Caudieux", "Jane Avril", "La Goulue", as stunning as they are familiar - special mention must be made of "May Milton". A few simple planes of black, blue and yellow, most of this image is white space, with the upward flick of her skirt conveying all the movement it needs. An image of this poster can be seen hanging on the wall within a later painting, "La Chambre bleue", by Pablo Picasso. Painted in 1901, the year of Toulouse-Lautrec's death, it stands as an epitaph of the highest praise. The baton of modernity, Picasso is clearly saying, has now passed to me.
'Ramón Casas and the Poster', Museum of Catalan History, Barcelona, until April 17. Tel +34 93 225 4244; 'Toulouse-Lautrec, The Origin of the Modern Poster', Catalan National Museum of Art, Barcelona, until April 24. Tel +34 93 622 0360
