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| Les
Foyers du Soldat, A.G. Wavshawsky (ca. 1918)
Paris: Coquemer Imp.
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The
posters bearing the red (or blue) triangle, the symbol of the YMCA
(or YWCA), are divided into two categories: Les Foyers du Soldat
and all the others.
The “others”
are a heterogeneous group in many ways—authored by many artists,
printed at home or abroad—but nonetheless form a cohesive
and representative whole. They call for service on all fronts, for
donations, for sacrifice, and are in many ways typical of American
poster propaganda during this period. Most interesting among these,
perhaps, though not unique in American poster design at this time,
are posters 128 and 410. Both feature propaganda within propaganda
(“in vitro” propaganda): poster
410 shows a YMCA girl posting a YMCA poster, and poster
128 advertises a war film—“Your boy in the movies!”
The kind of double vision, as produced in poster 410 in particular,
gives a much greater depth to the piece, as well as an amusing,
deliberate and self-aware, twist.
The Foyers
du Soldat (Union Franco-Americaine) collection features
fascinating, sometimes strange, graphically poor posters.
The Franco-American Union, concerned with the welfare of the French
poilu, advertises the YMCA-run “foyer” (a hard
to translate word with all the connotations of “home”
in English) as a refuge. Inside, man escapes the battlefield. Contrasted
to bleak snowy landscapes (poster
337) or destroyed urban scenes (poster
334), the bright lights in the foyers welcome the returning
soldier. But it is not enough to come home: the bearded soldiers
must be civilized, and taught not to spit on the ground (poster
48), for example. Though Post Traumatic Stress Disorder did
not exist as a term or medical concept at the time, these posters
recognize that soldiers are damaged by war and alienated from society
and loved ones. |
