Having been given a wonderful book for Xmas - Underground Art by Oliver Green, I thought the best place to start would be a brief look at how the London Underground
has portrayed itself over the years. We really have Frank Pick to blame for this. As well as being responsible for commissioning the typeface that the London Underground still uses today - Johnston, as Head of Publicity for the London Underground in 1908 he commissioned hundreds of posters by both popular artists and relatively unknown ones too. Man Ray, David Hockney, Edward McKnight Kauffer and Paul Nash are amongst the many artists who have produced artwork for the tube.
In 1927 after Frank Pick had been commissioning for 20 years he wrote:
"It may be supposed that their purpose is immediately directed to securing passengers. In some instances this has been the case, but in as many instances the purpose has been the establishment of goodwill and good understanding between the passengers and the companies.
A transport service is continually open to criticism and much of the criticism arises from a lack of knowledge. Every passenger is a potential critic, many passengers are dynamic ones....
"Even when the purpose has been to secure passengers it has been the practice to proceed by indirect means. To create a feeling of restlessness, a distate for the immediate surroundings, to revive that desire for change, which all inherit from their barbarian ancestors."
Therefore much of early and even current London Underground posters show how far you can travel on the tube and show the wonderful places you can travel to, particularly when you are not doing your normal 9 to 5 daily commute.
Roger Fry, a leading art critic of the 1920's, was somewhat cynical about this route. He said that the Underground "build up in the public imagination an image of something almost personal - as such they begin to claim almost the loyalty and allegiance of the public they exploit. They produce in the public a non critical state of romantic enthusiasm for the line. More and more the whole thing takes on an air of romance and unreality."
In the 1920's the Underground was regularly producing over forty posters a year, by the fifties this had reduced to only seven or eight. By 1975 only four a year were being produced by artists and designers. However, by the mid eighties "Art on the Underground" was revived, if only as a way of filling up the blank unsold advertising space on the tube. Each year about six posters were commissioned with print runs of 6,000 each. If they were popular they were reprinted in smaller sizes and sold to the general public.
David Booth's The Tate Gallery by Tube (1986) proved to be one of the most popular posters and has been sold around the world. It was an advert for the Tate Gallery and shows a tube map being made from lines of paint squeezed from a paint tube with the tube logo and the word Pimlico on it (Pimlico is the nearest tube station to the Tate Gallery). By the 1990's advertising was being sold more agressively by TDI (now Viacom outdoor), so there were fewer of these "free" spaces.
Even so, market research showed that the public liked these images which weren't hard sell and provided something everyone could enjoy. Now the London Transport museum is home to the great historic archives of the tube poster and is also the principal retail outlet for these posters.
My favourite tube ads from the book aren't really the ones that show the great places you can go (although they are good pieces of art in their own right). I find the more "tube propoganda" ones of greater interest.
This poster by Eric Kennington from the Second World War "Seeing it Through" series is particularly good. The 1944 series featured paintings of real London Underground staff who had carried out everyday acts of heroism during the war. The poem by A P Herbert which provided the caption for this is great:
"Thank you Mrs Porter,
For a good job stoutly done
Your voice is clear, and the Hun can hear
When you cry 'South Kensington'.
The world must hurry homeward,
The soldier on his way,
And the wheels whizz round on the Undergorund
At the voice of the girls in grey.
And though the skies are noisy
How calm the voices are
'Upminster Train! That man again!
Pass further down the car!'"
I also like the ones from the 1920's as they remind me of Art Deco and men wearing bowler hats. People being physically drawn to the tube like magnets is an interesting concept these days. In this 1927 poster "The Lure of the Underground" by Alfred Leete (also responsible for the greatest First World War recruiting poster - "Your Country Needs You"), the people being "lured" to the tube have pleasant looks on their faces. It is hard to imagine this poster being commissioned today even though crowds of people approching a tube station still resemble the image of metal shavings being drawn to a magnet.
At least these posters had some life of their own and were more contemporary than the 2001 "Love Is" series of posters gracing the tube from a few years ago. The kitsch "Love Is" characters from the 1970's sweetly tell us to not eat smelly food, to keep our feet off the seats, to let old ladies sit down first, to move down the carriage and other pieces of tube etiquette. However, to me, they lack the punch of the earlier posters and makes me wonder why contemporary cartoonists were not used.
To see some of the Love is Posters - not putting your feet on the seats, considering others when carrying luggage, not dropping litter and not eating smelly food.
Oliver Green concludes that the use of posters has come full circle and says that "the medium is still being put to thoughtful and creative use, brightening the daily travelling environment for millions of people in the biggest art gallery in the world."
A great companion book to Underground Art, is Pleasure Trips by Underground.
This book focusses on posters from the 1910s-1930s promoting leisure travel on the tube (yes it is possible). With sections on topics from Sport to Shopping the poster curator of the London Transport Museum, Jonathan Riddell celebrates this artform. A definite must for all Tube fans.
I bet you've never really bothered to look at the ads above your head before you sit
down. I remember some underground advertising that got you to try to think about
what was going on inside the head of the person sitting beneath the ad. This can be a rather disturbing hobby. But don't take it too far or you might end up in trouble, as the
following cautionary tale shows:
