Colour lithograph
120 x 160cm
1949
The challenge of producing an advert for a shoe polish prompted Loupot to create one of the most daring designs of his career. Using the brand’s pre-existing theme of a pouncing animal, he layered a black drawing on a black background that was visible only under certain conditions. From a distance, the poster appears to be simply a black surface with orange lettering and two white circles. As the viewer approaches the piece however, this effect starts to change, and a lion looms out from the dark. Such an effect was dependent on the lighting at hand. In the metro, for instance, the strong artificial lighting would have exaggerated the sense of the animal caught in the headlights, white eyes gleaming under the harsh glare of electric. More than any other work, this poster testifies to Loupot’s keen awareness of the poster in its urban environment. The work was not to everyone’s taste. Raymond Savignac, a poster artist in the generation following Loupot and the ‘Musketeers’, criticised the work as a piece of academic fancy. Whilst Savignac saw the work as a clever failure, the length of the campaign and the fact of its being rerun suggests that it was not quite the disaster the younger artist made it out to be.