Mardi Gras Posters-Big Business Here

MARDI GRAS 1979

MARDI GRAS.

NEW ORLEANS LE 27 FÉVRIER 1979

NEW ORLEANS

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MAREL CHAS

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MARDI GRAS 79|

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Carnival Supplement, IMPACT, Page 9

Since the first Mardi Gras poster appeared on the scene here in New Orleans just a few years ago, we have been since bombarded each following season by posters for just about anything from jazz festivals to space landings-all adhering jazz to space landings-all claiming that they are the "official" poster. To our knowledge, there was only one "official" or original poster for Mardi Gras, and that was the one that came out a few years ago. It lent its "officialness" to the fact that that year, it was the first and only one that was produced for the Carnival season.

This year at press time, we had in our possession ten such Mardi Gras posters, all claiming that they were the official ones, with two more that we knew of on the way. One, by Dureau, was held up by the silk screeners in Chicago, so it will probably arrive quite late.

Our intent is not to say which one or ones are official or which are the better ones, but to point out the difference in the two methods in which these posters are produced.

The traditional method of producing these types of posters is by the silk screen method (or serigraphs), which is a long and tedious process of pulling a squeege over a silk screen coated with ink and producing the image from the stencil that the artist has produced. These can be signed and numbered by the artist, since he is usually the one to do the work; however, often times the artist sends the art work to a silk screener and he does the laborious pulling of the prints.

The second method of producing these gems is by offset printing, which is taking a piece of art work and photographing it, then burning the image on to an aluminum plate, which in turn is put on a high speed press and literally thousands of posters can be produced by this method in an hour. These should not be signed and numbered, since the cost involved is usually pennies per copy.

We have taken the time to photograph the posters that we had access to in order to point out to the readers which ones are produced by which me-

thod.

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Which One

Will Hang

1979

On Your Wall?

From the Krewe of Memphis

The Artist