Political prints
The many satirical magazines offered artists a forum for their socialist and anarchist ideas. L’Assiette au beurre was one such publication. Its editor gave artists a free hand and allowed them to fill an entire issue with their drawings and self-penned captions.
When it was Vallotton’s turn, he used ‘his’ issue to express some intense social critique in caricature form. The figure types for the magazine cover were laid down on the lithographic stone with heavy outlines and a limited colour palette.
La Revue blanche
At the same time, avant-garde artists also supplied original graphic work for upmarket magazines with an elite readership, often in close collaboration with writers and poets.
La Revue blanche was an interdisciplinary magazine, each issue of which featured a print as its frontispiece. The contributions by Nabi artists like Pierre Bonnard, Félix Vallotton and Edouard Vuillard were highly sought-after by collectors.
Félix Vallotton, Cover for Crimes et châtiments, special issue of the journal L'Assiette au beurre (1 March 1902), 1902
Paul Elie Ranson, Woman (Femme), frontispiece of the journal La Revue blanche (November 1893), 1893
Hermann-Paul, Staircase of an Omnibus, 1893
Further reading
- Bénédite Didier, Petites revues et esprit bohème à la fin du XIXe siècle (1878-1889), Paris 2009
- Patricia Eckert Boyer, ‘The Artist as Illustrator in Fin-de-Siecle Paris’, in: Phillip Dennis Cate, The Graphic Arts and French Society, 1871-1914, New Jersey 1988
- Richard D. Sonn, Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin de Siècle France, Lincoln en London 1989