The Nineteenth Century Poster and the Birth of Marketing.

This paper deploys Walter Benjamin’s critical approach to history in order to trace the genealogy of the international political economy of marketing. The nineteenth century poster (i.e. Lautrec, Cheret) is presented here as the site in which the commodity acquired a visual dimension that went on to transform the cityscape and our daily experience. This work proposes to study the nineteenth century poster as the origin of visual marketing.The research stems from the observation that everyday life is characterized by the pervasiveness of advertising images. These images constitute a backdrop within which our identities and notions of the real are negotiated. By tracing the origin of visual marketing back to the nineteenth century poster, this paper seeks to expose the mechanisms and practices of marketing that mediate between common people and the global economy.To date the colour lithographic poster of the nineteenth century has remained almost exclusively a specialized topic within the history of art hence; it has been predominantly treated as a work of art and rarely as an emerging form of mass-advertising. Furthermore, it is striking that the poster has been virtually unnoticed within the rich field of nineteenth century history that looks at the emergence of industrial capitalism, mass society and modern consumption. This research fills this vacuum by bringing the analysis of the fin de siècle poster to the intersection between the thriving fields of visual history and international political economy.Stepping on Benjamin’s reflections on the Arcades Project and in particular his analysis of the phantasmagoria of modernity, the essay uncovers the transformations of experience brought about by the irruption of the colourful images of marketing in the public space. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]