A Toast to Wines and Spirits

Commentaries on all posters by Phyllis Freeman. From the Introduction by Clifton Fadiman: "On the other hand, some of the posters bear valiant witness to the perdurable. Here is Carlu's picture of someone who looks like "Maurice Chevalier" offering us the Methusaleh of aperitifs, Dubonnet. Look at the pretty, modestly Oriental 1925 poster on page 41 and rejoice that Jules Robin cognac is still alive and well. Trucher's 1903-4 poster celebrates Pouilly, a wind more popular than ever and perhaps, for all we know, still the favorite of cyclists. And, of course, Massiot's timeless Spaniard (the finest work of art, I think, of the lot) reminds us of that , some sixty years after he was conceived, the ports and sherries of the classic Sandeman are still available.

Poster art includes several examples of high historical interest, such as the famour Kitchener recruiting poster that effectively sold a delusion. Many others, equally effective, sell products of debatable value. But for the lover of wines and spirits the pleasure by the pioneer Cheret, the Raphaelitish Mucha, the turn of the century Tamagno, the Cubism-influenced Cassandre flows not merely from their unpretentious artistic appeal, not only from nostalgia, but also from the simple fact that they are selling something sound, something real.

Meanwhile, this volume, retrieving from the past so many examples of a charming nonelitist art, may, however modestly, serve as an allusion to the truism that civilization matters most when it enhances the individual life."