How posters became art

Hua Hsu | The New Yorker | 1st July 2019

The role of posters is to persuade. They were perhaps the defining form of mass communication in Belle Époque Paris. Since then they have become more, a street view of culture. Not all critics approve – Susan Sontag described posters as “emotional and moral tourism.” That’s severe. There is something to be said for their democratic nature that tells “a story of collective consciousness”.