In 1997, Patricia Oberio, an expert on popular culture, curated an exhibition on calendar art at the Government Museum, Sector 10, Chandigarh. In doing so, she accorded a mass-produced visual form the seriousness and reverence usually reserved for high art. Set against lurid pink walls, the exhibition invited viewers to look again at images that had long circulated in the everyday world of posters, calendars and popular devotion. Popular culture has always been perceived as mass-produced for mass consumption. It is loosely connected to street art and contrasted against the more refined classical or traditional arts. A sort of subaltern or working-class culture juxtaposed against the rigours of high classicism. Desi pitted against Margi, and Lok Dharmi versus Natya Dharmi. Poster art has since fascinated me and the dismissal of poster-making as a secondary craft ignores its unique position. While fine art often invites quiet contemplation, the poster necessitates a visual language that is both urgent and immediate. This sharpness is not accidental; it is a calculated blend of psychology and aesthetics. As a tool for messaging, it has served as the “people’s newspaper”. From the recruitment drives of the Agniveers to the protest graphics of the human rights movement, posters have turned streets into galleries of resistance. They possess the power to simplify a movement into a symbol — a raised fist, a hammer and sickle, a dove. Its minimalistic tools allow a single image to communicate complex ideologies or emotions in a matter of seconds. The artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is synonymous with the genre. In the late 19th century, he revolutionised the Parisian nightlife scene by creating lithographs for ‘Moulin Rouge’. His work blurred the line between commercial advertising and fine art. By treating the poster with the same technical rigor as a canvas, he forced the art world to acknowledge the medium as a valid art form. Pablo Picasso’s journey into poster art often leaned into a cutting-edge simplicity. His most famous contribution, the ‘Dove of Peace’ for the 1949 World Peace Congress, stripped the image of all complexity to create a universal icon. Maqbool Fida Husain’s origins are intrinsically linked to the sharp and vibrant world of cinema posters. In the 1930s, Husain earned his living by painting massive cinema hoardings in Bombay. This required him to work on a huge scale, often perched on a scaffolding, using quick-drying paints and broad, confident strokes. This poster aesthetic didn’t leave him even during the height of his fame as a studio artist. The energy of his famous horses and the bold black outlines of his figures in his later canvases can be traced to his experiences of painting posters that required a need for visibility and drama.
A poster of ‘Yerma’, directed by the writer.
This impact was vividly realised in the evolution of Indian performance arts, particularly in Parsi theatre and the subsequent rise of cinema. Parsi theatre posters were pioneers in using lithography to create a sense of wonder, blending mythological grandeur with flamboyant, stylised portraits of the actors. The Parsi theatre companies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were pioneers in visual marketing, treating their posters not just as advertisements, but as the soul of the production, capturing the narrative essence in a single visual image. This stemmed from the fact that the poster was the audience’s first encounter with the play’s universe. These posters had to compete with the sensory overload of bustling Indian marketplaces by using high-decibel visuals and sensational storytelling framed within a single image. When announcing a play like ‘The Man Who Cheats on His Wife’, the poster art wouldn’t shy away from the scandalous. It utilised high-contrast lithography to depict the domestic tension. The headlines were assertive and authoritative and designed to trigger curiosity in the passerby. Similarly, for a narrative like ‘The Thief Who Became a Saint’, the poster acted as a visual shorthand for the entire character arc. The artist would often use a ‘before and after’ composition or a single, striking image of the protagonist bathed in a divine light while still holding the tools of his former trade. This sharp juxtaposition of the profane and the sacred was a hallmark of the Parsi theatre aesthetic. These posters were precursors to the modern trailer. By distilling complex human failings into bold headlines and piercing imagery, Parsi theatre posters carved out a genre of art that was as unapologetic as the performances themselves. In the golden age of Indian cinema, posters for films like ‘Mother India’ and ‘Pakeezah’ were not just advertisements; they were national iconography. The ‘Mother India’ poster is a masterclass in symbolic sharpness, featuring Nargis as Radha, often depicted in a world-weary silhouette against a fiery, blood-red sky. The visual language used earthy, saturated tones to represent the soil and the struggle of a nascent nation, elevating the actress to a deity-like status. Conversely, ‘Pakeezah’ utilised a different kind of visual intensity — melancholy and opulence. These posters used deep purples, golds and the haunting gaze of Meena Kumari to create an atmospheric impact, signalling to the audience that they were about to witness something epic. While Raja Ravi Varma is celebrated as an artist, he was arguably the most influential poster artist India ever produced. His decision to move beyond the single canvas and embrace the printing press changed the way art was viewed. In 1894, he established the Ravi Varma Fine Art Lithographic Press, which was less about “high art” and more about the “power of the multiple”. Through his press, he turned his oil paintings into oleographs — vibrant, textured prints — that could be sold for a few annas. These were essentially the first mass-produced posters in India. Suddenly, the gods and goddesses that had been locked away in royal sanctums were now plastered to the walls of tea stalls and village huts. He created a sharp, definitive visual language for Indian divinity that was so powerful it remains the standard template even today. When we think of Goddess Lakshmi or Saraswati, we are often seeing them through the lens of a Ravi Varma poster. His imagery was used to sell everything — from soaps to matchboxes — and became a tool for commerce. His influence on Parsi theatre and cinema cannot be overstated. The dramatic lighting, the theatrical staging of characters, and the lush, saturated colours he used became the blueprint for the cinematic hoardings that followed. Today, political posters have moved from the walls of the city to the digital screens of social media, turning the medium into a ‘demand’ for immediate response. Modern political graphics often adopt a meme aesthetic, characterised by high contrast, bold text and easily shareable dimensions. These are designed to trigger an emotional reaction — be it outrage, pride, or humour — before the user scrolls past. Unlike the hand-painted posters of the past that remained on walls for weeks, digital political art is iterated by the hour, using visual hooks to cut through the relentless noise of the information age. The journey of the poster has come full circle, but the goal remains unchanged: to arrest the eye and appeal to the mind with a single, sharp image. — The writer is a theatre director
