“The Golden Age of Travel” evokes a time when venturing abroad was a genteel, leisurely affair, not the mad crush of irritable humanity it often is today. How civilized it all seemed then, to set sail on ocean liners where everyone dressed for dinner for a hearty evening of droll repartee followed by dancing. Air travel wasn’t as convenient as it is now, but the seats were roomier, the cabins resembled a flying cocktail lounge, and the flight attendants? Très chic! Trains were a rolling dream, offering club cars, sleepers, fine-dining service, and Eva Marie Saint darting about.
It wasn’t only excursions to faraway places that evoked reveries of romance and caprice. For Londoners, the Golden Age of Travel ran on tracks beneath the surface crust. Now the London Transport Museum has opened its Global Poster Gallery, with festivities including exhibition talks, design-your-own-poster instruction, and other kinds of neato activities. One of the delights of delving into the London Transport Museum’s collection of posters is discovering how a mundane trip on the Underground was portrayed as a magic-carpet ride to excite the senses.
True, many of the posters deal with proper conduct and safety (“Mind the gap,” etc.), or promote the Underground as a refuge from the beastly weather above (“When the days are hot, it is cooler below”). But the greatest initial impact and most lasting impression is made by posters, executed with stylized brio and playful imagination, that entice passengers to enter a wonderland of enjoyments a mere ticket away.
“Astonish me!” ordered Diaghilev. The Diaghilev of the transport poster was Frank Pick, the first chief executive of London Transport, who commissioned works that reflected industrial dynamism and avant-garde trends in art—even Picasso was spoofed. The overall effect was panoramic.
Motor shows, dog shows, air shows, museum exhibitions, matches at Wimbledon, regattas, the neon riot of West End theaters at night, these were all posterized with panache, though perhaps my favorite is a droll notice from 1935 (artist unknown) showing the “at home” hours at the London Zoo of its resident Komodo dragon for those brave enough to pay a call.
It isn’t only the attractions of London that beckon. The tube is promoted as the perfect escape portal from the noise and grime of the bustling, above-ground heap. “Cheap fares for school and pleasure parties,” promises a 1929 poster created by Freda Lingstrom that features a barefoot girl gamboling in the grass. Country and city commingle in a poster for the Smithfield Club Show (Compton Bennett, 1928), which shows a cow being led across a subway platform as startled passengers skedaddle up the steps.
It isn’t all frolics. A poignant poster from World War II by Eric Henri Kennington shows a uniformed station woman with her arm raised, signaling to someone in the distance. The image is dark, somber. Duty and resolve have seldom been more beautifully, gesturally rendered. The title of the poster is “Seeing It Through.” The need to see it through is equally pressing today.
A selection of tube posters from the London Transport Museum is on through the weekend at its Global Poster Gallery exhibition space
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James Wolcott is a Columnist for AIR MAIL. He is the author of several books, including the memoir Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in the Seventies and Critical Mass, a collection of his essays and reviews