MFA Boston, review by Kara L'Heureux

Post cards: A Look Back at Art

By Kara L’Heureux

These are not your usual post cards you would send to a friend; these cards are covered in small works of art. This phenomenon in the early 1900’s was the calling cards for artists that they would use to show their works like a portfolio. Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection are at the MFA in this new collection that holds several sets of some artist’s collections of post cards. Hung together the collection is a series of images that go together in their own little show. The style for these cards is very different for every artist, some with words on them, like an ad, some photos, and others drawings. Some have political messages and some are just beautiful to the eye.

A simple collection hung upon the wall in the back of the room is the Rio de Janeiro by Manuel Mora made in 1884 – 1956. These six cards are of colorful images of different beautiful women of different races and from different country’s with flags behind and around them. Each card has one or two women on it that are elegant, rich, and beautiful. These women have heavily done make up and perfect hair and represent the elite and rich society women. These cards were to be use by tourism comities that would use the beautiful women in order to attract visitors to the Rio de Janeiro by making readers think they too can be part of the high life and feel rich. These cards have strategy behind them but are beautiful to the eyes; they show how women once looked and what was in style at that time.

Other collections include photos of naked women draped in sheer chiffon posing as men’s neckties against men’s shirts. This elegant collection perhaps is for a fashion magazine. Another set of cards are political cartoons including Theodore Roosevelt and other political figures at the time. This set could have been possible posters or cartoons for newspapers.

In this one room’s collection shows an entire phenomenon and a style of art at the time.  Though these images are small they show the artists proses and give detail into what was needed in the commercial art world at the time. The images stand-alone but also go together in a beautiful collection.