Art: War Posters

Good war posters must tell their story simply, at a glance, for keeps—to plain citizens and highbrows alike. Few U.S. war posters since Pearl Harbor have done so. The majority have been ambiguous, arty, dutiful, frequently not worth the paste that held them up. These failings were long suspected even by the Government agencies whence the poster deluge has come.

Meanwhile in Washington dissatisfaction with the posters program led to coordination of all Government posters under Elmer Davis’ Office of War Information. Heading a new Graphics Division is Francis E. (“Hank”) Brennan, former Art editor of FORTUNE. Last week Poster-man Brennan, busy formulating his plans, was definite on one main point. Said he: “Thus far, the Government has fumbled the ball.”

The poster trend has caught up many a well-known U.S. painter more accustomed to abstractions and highbrow symbolism, than to a simple realism. One such is Lawrence Beall Smith, whose poster of three children shadowed by a swastika (see cut) was released this week by Associated American Artists. Where the shadow comes from is an art problem that plain observers are left to guess. McKnight Kauffer’s abstract Steel! Not Bread poster (see cut} would probably confuse even sophisticated observers. Illustrator Jean Carlu’s mechanistic Give ‘Em Both Barrels ( see cut} is modern chewing-gum art, minus the latter’s peppermint flavor. Workers in five New Jersey plants on whom it was tested came up with the conclusion that Illustrator Carlu meant to depict the FBI’s fight against crime. They mistook the riveter for a gangster.

No new U.S. poster has carried the punch of James Montgomery Flagg’s recruiting poster of World War I depicting a persuasive Uncle Sam pointing a solemn finger at the U.S. and saying I WANT YOU FOR U.S. ARMY. Closer to it last week was a poster by veteran Saturday Evening Post Coverman Norman Rockwell. Created without benefit of a New Deal bureau, Artist Rockwell’s machine gunner (see cut), whose wounds and exhausted cartridge belt cry aloud for assistance, was painted at the suggestion of Manhattan’s Williams & Saylor Advertising Agency, for Army Ordnance. Like all good war posters, it needed no careful study to evoke in plain men a forthright fighting emotion.