At first glance it looks like the cover of Vogue or Vanity Fair but Bal de la Fourrure is a poster. By 1930, when this was printed, magazines had taken over from the poster as the medium where new styles in the graphic arts were born. A fur ball at Mardi Gras time is pure visual conceit: a holiday that is the first celebration of the coming spring includes a parade (outdoors, need I say) where the libations consumed have been known to free people of their inhibitions and their clothes.
Charles Gesmar (1900-1928) was precocious, a lucky thing for he died at 28 from pneumonia. His first known drawing dates from 1912 and shows his mother walking through a door. By the time Gesmar was fifteen The son of a fabric merchant, Gesmer knew that he wanted to become a designer by the time he was fifteen. At sixteen he began his association with the music-hall star Mistinguett, designiong her costumes and creating for her an indelible graphic image in posters. When the duo played in New York in November 1923, the Times noted that the revue put more gold on the costumes and less fabric on the girls than they had ever seen.
Ideas seem to flow from his pencil and when Gesmar began to make money it flowed from his wallet. Mistinguett called the speed "frightening." He paid for taxis with hundred franc notes and developed a taste for opium - never cheap. In the event, Charles Gesmar died as quickly as he had lived.
Image:
Charles Gesmar - Bal de la Fourrure, March, 1930, Bibliotheque Nationale de france, Paris.