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Long before the advent of Instagram, how was advertising in 19th-century Paris? A new exhibition at Musée d’Orsay reveals it

In our contemporaneity, advertising holds a dominant role, shaping our desires and behaviours through a relentless stream of images that saturate our visual landscape—from Instagram and TikTok feeds to the walls of metro corridors. But what happens when these images, in their banality and mediocrity, contribute to a more superficial, even vulgar society, creating a form of "visual pollution" that permeates both our cities and our screens? This concern reveals the fragility of a world overwhelmed by the proliferation of images —a danger highlighted by numerous intellectuals, from Andy Warhol to Jean Baudrillard, who questioned the impact of mass media and consumer culture. Even today, the question they posed remains unanswered.

However, there is a dimension of advertising that, when elevated to the status of art, becomes a powerful mirror of both the society and the aesthetics of its time—transforming the urban tissue of our cities into a veritable figurative laboratory and a space for cultural reflection. This was particularly true during the Belle Époque, an era marked by a rapid industrialization, the emergence of a wealthy new social class, and the rise of a dynamic visual culture fuelled by the blaze of avant-garde movements. In this context, posters (affiches) became not only an artistic and technical phenomenon, but also an urban, social, and political one—capturing, in all its brilliance and contradictions, the essence of "modern life" and of a society in full transformation. A deep dive into the advertising and visual culture of Second Empire France is the focus of L'art est dans la rue, a new exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, open from March 18 to July 6, 2025 in which more than 230 works by masters such as Bonnard, Chéret, Grasset, Mucha, Steinlen, and Toulouse-Lautrec are brought together to evoke the effervescence of the street universe at the dawn of the 20^th century.

The engraving of images onto blocks for serial reproduction is an artistic technique with deep roots in many visual cultures. Japan, for instance, has cultivated woodblock printing since the Heian period, later reaching the magnificent heights of ukiyo-e during the Edo era. However, in Europe, due to historical and cultural factors, this art form struggled to gain widespread traction. It was only with Japan’s opening to international trade and the industrialization of printing processes in the Nineteenth-century that woodcuts—and, even more significantly, lithographs, which use stone rather than wood as a matrix—began to grow in popularity in the West.

Lithography operates on the principle of repelling grease and water, where a drawing or text is transferred onto a stone plate treated with nitric acid, allowing only the image or text to retain ink while the rest repels it and remains water-absorbent. This technique forms the foundation of all the works displayed at the beginning of the exhibition, including Imprimeries Charles Verneau by Théophile Alexandre Steinlen—a monumental mirror of Parisian street life, where bourgeois citizens, workers, laundresses, and children move among and engage, coming together in what was hailed as “the most extraordinary mural print of our time.”

Figura 1 Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (1859-1923), Imprimerie Charles Verneau (Paris), Affiches Charles Verneau. "La Rue", 1896, Color lithograph, 240 × 300 cm, © Photo BnF, Bibliothèque nationale de France, department of Prints and Photographs, Paris

The spread of illustrated colour posters paralleled the profound transformation of both society and the urban landscape of the Paris of the Belle Époque. Charles Garnier, the renowned architect behind the iconic Opéra, harshly criticized “these giant industrial billboards that sprawl across our streets, ruining so many of our cities’ beautiful views”. His words were undoubtedly aimed at the “screaming tones” and “poor taste” of certain posters, such as those produced by the Imprimerie Rouchon à l’œil...

igura 2 Anonymous author, Imprimerie Rouchon (Paris), À l’Œil. On donne à l’Œil, 1864, Wood engraving in colors, 125 × 98 cm, © Photo BnF, Bibliothèque nationale de France, department of Prints and Photographs, Paris

A different spirit, however, animated Joris-Karl Huysmans, who saw these affiches as striking visual interruptions that “unbalance, with the sudden intrusion of their joy, the motionless monotony of a penitentiary decorum”. Similarly, Maurice Talmeyr declared how “true architecture today, the one that emerges from the surrounding and pulsating life, is the poster—the profusion of colours under which the stone monument disappears”. This proliferation of affiches is vividly captured in Eugène Atget's photograph Rue Piatget exhibited in the room, where a modest urban corner —far removed from the grandeur of Haussmannian Paris—bears silent witness to a world in rapid transformation...

Figura 3 Eugène Atget (1857-1927), Rue du Prévôt, 1900 or 1901, Albumen print, 21.5 × 17 cm, © Photo BnF, Bibliothèque nationale de France, department of Prints and Photographs, Paris

Place Denfert-Rochereau, always by Atget, captures instead a colonne Morris, a tall and elegant dark green advertising column that has been an iconic element of Parisian street furniture for generations...

Figura 4 Eugène Atget, Place Denfert-Rochereau, 1898, albumen print on paper, 20.5 × 17.3 cm, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France © Photo BnF

The spread of affiches in cities, though ephemeral, was finally recognized as a significant social phenomenon—so much so that the art critic Roger Marx proclaimed, “Tout comme la société, la rue s'est transformée” (“Just like society, the street has transformed”). Through their bold imagery and strategic placement, affiches became more than mere advertisements: they became an integral part of the visual culture of Paris, altering the way people interacted with their environment.

Figura 5 Georges Chevalier (1882-1967), Paris, Place de la Bourse, June 5, 1914, Autochrome, 9 x 12 cm, © Photo Archives de la Planète, musée départemental Albert-Kahn, department of Hauts-de-Seine

Figura 6 Union photographique française, Rue S[ain]t-Jacques, Immeubles 8 et 10, between 1893 and 1898, Aristotype, 29.3 × 23 cm, Paris, Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris ©

This phenomenon emerged alongside the surge in consumption fuelled by the Industrial Revolution. Advertising became in fact an indispensable tool for generating demand and influencing consumer choices, promoting a wide range of goods—from automobiles to chocolate, spirits, and gas burners for lighting—ultimately transforming the urban landscape into a dazzling, polychromatic phantasmagory of commerce, and captivating the attention of all who passed through.

Figura 7 Leonetto Cappiello (1875-1942), Imprimerie P. Vercasson & Cie (Paris), Société Le Trèfle à quatre feuilles. Automobiles Brasier, 1907, Color lithograph, 162 × 122 cm, Paris, National Library of France, Department of Prints and Photography, © Photo Leone

Figura 8 Leonetto Cappiello (1875-1942), Imprimerie P. Vercasson & Cie (Paris), Chocolat Klaus, 1903, Color lithograph, 161 × 119 cm, Paris, National Library of France, Department of Prints and Photography, © Photo BnF

Figura 9 Henri Gustave Jossot (1866-1951), Imprimerie Camis (Paris), Guignolet. Cointreau, 1898, Color lithograph, 130 × 100 cm, Paris, National Library of France, Department of Prints and Photography, © Photo BnF

In addition to serving as the iridescent iconographic encyclopaedia of Parisian life, affiches became a true avant-garde artistic genre, precisely because of the need to create works of high aesthetic value to capture public attention. No longer just a mass communication tool, but a democratic "work of art", accessible not in the cold halls of museums but in the vibrant streets of our cities, affiches attracted the interest of numerous avant-garde painters at the turn of the century, including Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, as well as Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Leonetto Cappiello and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. These artists gave the genre a distinctive medium of expression, defined by features such as the abandonment of traditional perspective, daring compositional cuts, and bold flat colours — a style both synthetic and audacious, capable of subtly imprinting a message into the consumer's subconscious. Grand examples of this "open-air museum, [...] formed by chance, where the brilliant collides with the mediocre, the exquisite with the vulgar, and the spiritual with the absurd," can be seen in Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Aristide Bruant, which captures the stage presence of the famous cabaret artist in a striking, synthesized style...

Figura 11Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), Imprimerie Edward Ancourt, Ambassadeurs. Aristide Bruant dans son cabaret, 1892, Color lithograph, 134 × 95 cm, © Paris, National Library of France, Department of Prints and Photography, Photo BnF

...in Steinlen's celebrated Chat noir, perhaps among the most famous cats in the history of art, in which an enigmatic black cat with unruly fur promotes the local cabaret bearing his same name...

Figura 12 Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (1859-1923), Imprimerie Charles Verneau (Paris), Prochainement. Tournée du Chat Noir de Rodolphe Salis, 1896, Color lithograph, 140 × 100 cm, © Paris, National Library of France, Department of Prints and Photography, Photo B

...or, again, in the graphic work of Alfons Mucha, whose exquisitely art nouveau linearism celebrates the glory of actress Sarah Bernhardt, the heroine of Catulle Mendès' tragedy Medée …

Figura 13 Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), Imprimerie Ferdinand Champenois (Paris), Médée. Théâtre de La Renaissance. Sarah Bernhardt, 1898, Color lithograph, 210 × 78 cm, © Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Department of Prints and Photographs, BnF

Finally, the exhibition concludes with a reflection on the social significance of affiches. As architect Frantz Jourdain eloquently stated in his article L'art dans la rue, “people educate themselves in the street as much as in school classrooms.” In this sense, affiches become not only a tool for commerce, but also a platform for political movements, trade unions, and revolutionary committees. A genuine graphic and propagandistic rhetoric emerged, with affiches featuring monumentally vertical designs that were later instrumental in mobilizing young Frenchmen at the dawn of the Great War.

In conclusion, the exhibition offers a deep immersion into the joie de vivre of France’s “naughty nineties”, highlighting a figurative form once regarded as minor but, in fact, rich in cultural significance. What can contemporary art learn from this legacy?