DR.
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AND THE NEW
"RENCH ADVERTISEMENT
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MICHAEL SPONDE
ICVER Y ONE who of late has set up theories about graphic
commercial work has come to the conclusion that here too, as
in all artistic creation, the national element is the predominant
factor. How easy it is to contradict such a theory! The new
sensational French posters were created by the artist Cas*
sandre, and the new French advertisement, which has developed
in recent years, especially in the large fashion papers, has been
most strongly influenced and inspired by Agha, a Russian
born in 1896 in Nicolajeff. He is the leading spirit of the Dor*
land Studio, where he reformed the advertisement section of
the French fashion-paper "Vogue", in common with his friend
Real, the artistic director of the studio. His work to-day cannot
even be said to have been influenced by the course of his deve*
lopment, for he studied in St. Petersburg at the State Science and
National Economic faculties of the Polytechnic High School,
and then, in Paris made a study of modern oriental languages.
His artistic training ran parallel with these scientific
studies. It began under the famous Russian graphic
artist Professor Narbut at the Academy of Arts
in Kieff, and young Agha was doing practical art
work at the age of seventeenhe drew an illustrate
ed alphabet for a Russian publisher. Paris led him
into the sphere of elegant advertisement. The ma*
gazine "Vogue" offered a particularly brilliant ope
portunity of distinguishing himself experimentally
in this field, and thereby achieving results which
served to determine the character of the presente
day advertisements in "Vogue". At the moment
Agha is engaged in superintending the German
edition of the magazine "Vogue" in Berlin, and
he hopes to achieve a still closer typographic unity
between the editorial and the advertising sections
than was possible in Paris, thus fulfilling an old
aspiration. Fie devotes especial attention to the
fulbpage advertisement, building it up as a strongly
decorative composition, and endeavouring to ap«
proximate its delicacy of form and design to the
refined countenance of the editorial section of the
magazine, as it is known and recognized the whole
17
Kilinn
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WOrld Over. Translated by E. T. Scheffauer
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Prix t lO fr.
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