Propaganda Postcards - through January 21, 2019 - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Art of Influence: Propaganda Postcards from the Era of World Wars
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
To January 21, 2019

Propaganda of the era appeared on
posters, postcards and stamps

"Leonard Lauder was first drawn to postcards as a boarding school student in Miami Beach. Lauder, the 85-year-old chairman emeritus of the Estée Lauder Companies... stuck to collecting. Before long, he was buying 100-year-old postcards from a stamp dealership. Today, he owns about 130,000 postcards. Much of the collection is a promised gift to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston."

"[Collecting] cards taught him how easy it can be to fall prey to a dangerous message. 'If you look at the imagery today, you would say, "How could they have been duped by it?" But they were,' he noted. 'What drove me to do this book was that most people did not realize the banality of the propaganda and how effective it was. That was… the Facebook of the time...'" [read more on ArtNet].

"Drawn from the Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Archive, The Art of Influence: Propaganda Postcards from the Era of World Wars highlights postcards as both valuable historical documents and masterworks of graphic design."

Propaganda artwork typical of
the exhibit's era

"Drawn from the Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Archive, The Art of Influence: Propaganda Postcards from the Era of World Wars highlights postcards as both valuable historical documents and masterworks of graphic design."

"Featuring several hundred postcards produced in Europe, the Soviet Union, the U.S. and Japan, the exhibition explores a range of themes connected to early-20th-century propaganda, including leaders, heroes, villains, abstractions, fake news and mockery."

"With pithy slogans and bold colors, striking graphics and biting caricatures, postcards from the first half of the 20th century conveyed messages that were easily understood and remembered. This is art with an agenda..." [read more on ArtFixDaily].

Propaganda postcard
from same era as exhibit

"Almost without exception, the most interesting postcards come from what the French call l’entre-deux-guerres: the years between the wars... This particular period makes for a striking collision of isms: artistic (Futurism, Expressionism, Constructivism, hence that Soviet dash) and political (Nazism, Bolshevism, Fascism, Falangism). It can be dizzying to see the two streams come into alignment, as they frequently do with Futurist design and Fascist message."

"A lithograph promoting the 1936 Winter Olympics — like the Summer Olympics, held in Germany: the Nazi Games — is shown in three different sizes: poster, postcard, and in between. It’s a striking demonstration of how size can matter, though not necessarily in ways one might expect. And the size that might matter most is the one that lets a viewer put the image in his or her pocket and carry it away for another day..." [read more in the Boston Globe].

TO VISIT

The Art of Influence: Propaganda Postcards from the Era of World Wars
Museum of Fine Arts, Avenue of the Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston
10-5 daily, open until 10 Wednesday-Friday
The Art of Influence Exhibition
Exhibit Catalog
Exhibition Tickets
MFA Boston - Plan Your Visit
Postcards at the MFA

To learn more
The Art of Influence: Propaganda Postcards from the Era of World Wars - ArtFixDaily
Collector Leonard Lauder on How Vintage Postcards Can Help Us Understand Propaganda in the Present - ArtNet
Postcards as propaganda at the MFA - Boston Globe
Postcards from the Propaganda Front - The Paris Review (lots of images)
When Postcards Provided the Perfect Format for Propaganda - The Daily Beast
Leonard A. Lauder bibliography - Worldcat


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