Anti-art on the Underground
I don’t really wish to besmirch our blog with these images, but I feel strongly about this. As we all know, this year marks the 150th anniversary of the world’s first ever underground railway system. The London Transport Museum has done a great job of celebrating this huge London achievement and we, London Historians, have contributed in our modest way, with more in the pipeline. If you haven’t yet been to LTM’s fabulous exhibition of Tube posters over the years, you really must. Truly inspiring. There’s also a large selection here.
So how do the posters of 2013 – the Tube’s big anniversary year – shape up against the best from days of yore? Well, just take a look at these examples.
Is this Transport for London’s best tribute to the commercial artists, painters, calligraphers of the past? Our city is the home to some of the most talented illustrators on the planet, acknowledged worldwide. Many of us know one or two of them. I know I do. So why, TfL, what’s going on here? Who’s responsible for this drek?
It’s the end of April. There’s time to put things right. Our – and all proud Londoners’ – challenge to you.
Update: Turns out these items are from the GLA, not TfL (hat-tip to Hazel Baker on Facebook) – hence, presumably Ken Livingstone’s Mayor of London propaganda tag, something Boris chose to retain. So, too many cooks is a factor.
While I too would love there to be more innovative and beautiful posters on the underground; I don’t feel that the issue isn’t really that important. The posters you have illustrated are simple and, most importantly, cheap to produce. In an era when the usage of the tube is exceedingly high, maintenance works are heavier and the whole network is being upgraded, I would rather my money went on these things, rather than something I see fleetingly for a second.
Also, what has to be remembered is that a considerable portion of the wonderful posters of the past were designed by private companies, whose directors and managers were responsible to shareholders. However, today TfL has a responsibility to the taxpayer. Therefore, every high-art poster will raise my (and everyone else’s) taxes and fares further, especially as its budget has been recently reduced because of cuts.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think it is very unfortunate that in the 150th year of the tube more cannot be done; but I don’t think the superficial is 1000th as important infrastructure that keeps London moving.
Ah, well, yes, you see. Frank Pick as well as commissioning well-known established artists, also hired guys (and, unusually for the day, gals), fresh out of art school, some of whom were still doing artwork for the Underground decades after nationalisation. Private Tube companies had *plenty* motivation to work cheaply, not only in art but in architecture too.
I reckon the artwork cost is a fraction of the print, distribution and mounting costs in these matters in any case. I thought about trying to find out the cost of their artwork under FoI, I’m willing to bet it’s much more that we’d think. Just because it looks cheap, doesn’t follow that it is cheap. I put it down to laziness, lack of imagination and can’t-be-arsedness rather than cost issues.
If you “see something fleetingly for a second”, but don’t read it, then it has failed. In the past there were cases of passengers actually missing their train in order to finish reading a Tube poster!
Interesting points Mike. Regarding the private/public thing I would agree that there was plenty of motivation to work cheaply. But, perhaps a comparison with the past posters you refer to is not that useful as they were designed to sell a product; a trip to ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’. There was therefore a commercial role they played and the cost could be justified in terms of generated traffic. The majority of the posters above are simply information posters, designed to tell period what they need to know.
Indeed, regarding the fleeting view, I suppose that’s what I want; to glean all the information I need walking past. There is a through-flow issue if at rush hour everyone is reading posters and getting in people’s way. But, if a poster can convey to millions of commuters what it needs to in a fraction of a second, then it has achieved its job, hasn’t it? This is what posters above set out to do. They are clear, simple and can be read in an instant; do they need to be complex?
Also, I honestly don’t think the posters are simple because of laziness. A few weeks back I was lucky enough at a conference to have a word with one of the TfL archivists. Her team worked with the promotions department on the poster of the different generations of train users going up the escalator. Yet, the number of bodies in her office has recently been cut back from 11 members of staff to 3, and according to her this was not uncommon across many of the ‘backroom’ parts of TfL, including the promotions team. So, when such hard cutting has been going on, to say that is laziness I think may be being a bit harsh on under-pressure teams who not only have to do posters for the tube, but for every form of transport TfL handles.
If you want to get hard info on this, I am sure the TfL archive people will help you out – they’re very lovely.
Good points on the staffing front. And also, I’m aware of being a bit harsh in comparing the best of 150 years with a snapshot of 2013 comprising a handful of posters. Having said that, it’s not just a 2013 problem. With a few exceptions, Underground poster art has been mediocre for decades.
My gripe remains that we *are* a world city with a) a public rail network to be proud of and b) world-class commercial artists. Cheap or expensive, we can do better. Probably for 95% of Tube users, this stuff has little importance. But if you *have* seen past work, then maybe you think differently.
Incidentally, I had heard somewhere last year that London Underground were going to put actual old posters around the network this year as part of the celebration, in which case cost for artwork would be nil. Great idea, but I may have got the wrong end of the stick on that.
It is always hard to know what will be viewed as original and creative in 50 years hence. I wonder what the reaction was to some of the tube art from periods past in their day.
I don’t think commuters of the past thought about any more than those of today. This is not that big a deal in the general scheme of things, except perhaps symptomatic of neglect in a certain area. It is after all an ephemeral medium which can quite easily improve. But I’m willing to bet that 50 years hence, there won’t be too many requests for this stuff from the archives.
As a guide for the poster 150 exhibition I have a deep sympathy with the points Mike makes. There is no doubt that the exhibition reflects that there was a golden age of the travel poster – but like all ‘golden ages’ they don’t last. The general view amongst my colleagues is that the commissioning of high quality posters was in decline from the immediate post war period and became terminal once London Transport started to place its advertising work out to agencies. Not that this meant mediocrity – the poster ‘Fly the Tube’, where the nose cones of the current aircraft including Concorde were wittily attached to the latest silver tube trains operating over the new Heathrow extension bucked the trend. (Concorde has gone, but the same tube trains still run to Heathrow!).
In the exhibition there is a glimpse of the possible future of tube advertising – the work called ‘Linear’ which is displayed on a LED screen. This may allow some very innovative work to be displayed in the future. Also one mustn’t forget that, aware of its ‘lost poster heritage’, London Underground launched ‘Art on the Underground’ in 1988 which originally launched 6 high quality ‘art’ posters a year. The programme is still with us in the shape of ‘Platform Art’, but maybe not to everyone’s taste.
We did understand that the intention was to reprint some classics but this may now not happen. Maybe the poster 150 exhibition, only the 4th such exhibition in 150 years is compensation. Certainly many of the posters on display will disappear back into the store at Acton and may not see the light of day for many years – now that really is a shame
Just came across this blog site http://railwayposter.wordpress.com/ and it immediately made me think of this discussion. Thought you may be interested, Ian.