Posters Capture Slice Of History, Classic Illustrations

Just 30 years after the "war to end all wars," the next global conflict began.

A community-organized exhibition in three Granville venues provides a taste of how World Wars I and II were fought on the American home front.

"Art for War's Sake" displays more than 100 wartime posters in the Denison Museum, the Granville Historical Society Museum and the Robbins Hunter Museum, all within walking distance of one another in Granville's compact downtown.

Posters urged citizens to buy war bonds, plant victory gardens, cut gasoline use, enlist in the military, work hard in industrial plants and keep their mouths shut.

"The kind of war being waged demanded a broad, deep engagement in a variety of ways if the effort was to be successful," said Don Schilling, a Denison University history professor.

Schilling, president of the Granville Historical Society, was an exhibit organizer. Most of the movie posters came from the collections of Granville resident David Bingham and Denison University, a federal depository library site.

Thousands of posters were created during each war by leading illustrators. The subjects ranged from the mundane to the exalted.

A 1943 poster by H. Kroener included the exhortation "Save waste fats for explosives. Take them to your meat dealer."

Norman Rockwell, meanwhile, created his iconic "Four Freedoms" series: Freedom of Speech, Freedom To Worship, Freedom From Want and Freedom From Fear.

"Through the posters, we can get an insight into the kind of roles the civilian population, and those going into the military, were being asked to play -- and the ways the wars were being defined, what we were fighting for," Schilling said.

Posters were the "sound bites" of earlier eras, said Richard Aschenbrand, dean of visual communication at the Columbus College of Art & Design.

"They were very effective," he said. "And they had a great deal of appeal because there was so much less-rapid communications back then, when people were not so assaulted with communications."

Aschenbrand will speak Sept. 10 on "The Art of the Poster" at the Robbins Hunter Museum, as part of a lecture series related to the works.

July 03, 2008