It’s election mania time again. While politicians jostle for campaigning spaces on our roads, their promotional advertisements battle it out on our public walls. It is a stampede almost, with every faction glueing their printed paraphernalia over their rival’s existing ones. Familiar and unfamiliar faces with folded hands and gleaming smiles, implore you to vote from walls that strictly state ‘Stick no bills’. These billboards may go unnoticed while we go about our survival, but they’ve come a long way in history.
The earliest known posters were made by ancient Egyptians for religious purposes. Painted on the walls of their pyramids and temples, they depicted the divine. Until the 19th century, posters were laden with text and printed with wood blocks. The first colour lithograph poster however was created in 1866 by French artist Jules Chéret. His designs became very popular and were used in political as well as advertising campaigns. When the two World Wars broke out in the 20th century, nations scurried to use posters to spread important messages. One of the most iconic wartime posters was the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, which intended to boost the morale of the people.
Desperate to brighten war weary moods, posters gradually started becoming very decorative, filled with floral designs and featuring glamorous women, in keeping with the Art Nouveau style. The excessive ornamentation soon succumbed to revolutions and posters turned into fierce propaganda instruments in the hands of the communists. They worked brilliantly because not only were they cheap to make, but messages singing the glories of the revolution could be conveyed to the illiterate too. A significant poster of the times was the announcement of China’s Great Leap Forward initiative in 1958, which showed bundles of grain shooting out of a field like rockets, depicting the country’s focus on agriculture.
India harnessed the power of posters as early as in 1938, when the 51st session of the Indian National Congress was held in Haripura in Gujarat. Mahatma Gandhi wanted to include a visual vocabulary for the civilians who would attend the session. He commissioned Bengali artist Nandalal Bose to make around 400 posters that depicted the daily lives of the local people.
When India became a free country, the nation’s first tryst with democratic elections saw visual materials like posters, brochures, and wall art being incorporated into the corridors of election campaigning. Various political parties with their hard earned symbols, dotted the length and breadth of the country in printed and painted forms. And thus began the culture of the visual signs of democracy in India.
While the age of the Internet has clearly marked a shift in marketing from the printed to the digital, some trends will never fade away. In a country that still has a vast population that is oblivious to the virtual world, posters manage to make inroads into inaccessible remote lives.
The political poster is an intrinsic part of Indian life. Candidates may shift loyalties and parties at their convenience but the posters they rely on to market their self-indulgent ambitions will always be a constant on our streets and in our existence!
Jitha Karthikeyan
jithakarthikeyan2@gmail.com
(Jitha Karthikeyan is an artist and curator, passionate about making art accessible to the larger public)