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Title: Grande Semaine d’Aviation Caen
Description: In 1910, thousands throughout Europe flocked to buy tickets to the most exciting spectacle to be found: air shows. After the first great show, the August, 1909 “Grand Week of Aviation” in Reims, France, cities all over Europe organized their own aviation exhibitions, patterned on the Reims one. This poster advertises one such festival, the Grand Week of Aviation in Caen, an old and historic city in the region of Normandy, on the northwest coast of France. The artist, Dessoures, depicts old and new Caen in this image. The prominent twin towers of Caen’s famous medieval Abbaye-aux-Hommes (Men’s Abbey), dating from the late 11th-century, is silhouetted in the lower background of the poster. |
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The windblown man and woman pressed together and watching the flying machines above them stand on a platform surrounding the spire of Caen’s medieval Église de Saint-Pierre (Church of Saint Peter). The artist carefully renders the well-known buildings, even accurately detailing the tracery of the balcony. While the height of the church spires and gargoyles were architectural wonders of their day, by comparison, the airplane soars significantly higher. The air show that summer of 1910 took place at Caen’s “champs d’aviation,” or aviation field, which was located, 600 meters from the city’s “octroi,” the structure originally built to house city officials who collected duties (“octroi”) on certain types of goods being brought into the city Again, the poster’s design uses the contrast between old and new to highlight the airplane’s modernity. The poster’s text uses the octroi, a definitively medieval era relic, to situate the newest addition to Caen’s map, the airfield. Among those competing in this particular air show was the youngest pilot in the world at that time, 15-year old Marcel Hanriot, who had received his pilot’s license only a few weeks earlier, on June 15. Marcel was the son of René Hanriot, a French airplane builder who had begun building airplanes in 1908. Quite possibly Dessoures is depicting young Hanriot piloting the monoplane in the foreground, which seems to have captured the eyes of the couple. The plane itself does appear similar to a Hanriot monoplane, although not the model flown at Caen, which did not have an exposed fuselage framework. That characteristic look was a part of the structure of Louis Blériot’s famous Blériot XI, piloted by Blériot the previous year on his renowned flight across the English Channel. Dessoures also includes a classic Wright Flyer Model A, seen in the background, and in the distance, a hot air balloon. Rounding out the group, and serving as a reminder of the inspiration for flight, is a bird. The composition might be intentionally making a patriotic point by having the Wright craft in the background. The French who had at first dismissed the Wright brothers’ claims to flying success, were excited but chagrined when Wilbur Wright demonstrated his airplane in France in 1908. New French developments in aircraft design, showcased here in the monoplane, were keeping pace with the Wrights’ achievement, and Dessoures perhaps wished to illustrate this in his design. He seems to imply a technological progression in his arrangement, from balloons, to the Wrights, to the new French plane zooming by the church. Dessoures has also created an aesthetically pleasing balance of warm, bright colors for the sky and aircraft with the cooler, darker colors of the church spire and the observant couple. Posters such as this one served as obvious commercial advertisements for the events shown, as well as the hosting locales, but also underscored the fever for flying that was sweeping Europe. The viewer is drawn into a juxtaposition of centuries-old monuments of stone and the latest fragile constructions that newly populated the skies, wheeling and soaring above an ancient landscape. |
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