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Title: Vliegweck Dordreght Description: Following the world’s first air show, the great aviation meet of August, 1909, in Reims, France, numerous air shows, modeled on the Reims event, followed. Private and government sources initiated the meets. Manufacturers of all sorts of products, including those related to aviation, offered large cash prizes to pilots and airplane builders who flew the fastest, the longest or highest flights. During these week-long celebrations of all things aerial, pilots set records, earning prize money to fund their further flying endeavors. Meets also provided a showcase for manufacturers to display and publicize their models not only to the general public, but also to potential investors, including private entrepreneurs and nascent government-sponsored air forces. One such event is advertised in the poster here, a “Vliegweek,” or “Flying Week,” in the Dutch city of Dordreght (or Dordrecht) from June 17-25, 1911. The poster gives information on admission prices for tickets, subscription pricing, and Sunday pricing. |
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Given the possibility that weather or other unforeseen circumstances might cancel the meet, poster text also details the system by which air meet officials would broadcast the status of flying conditions to the ticket-buying public—a white flag waving from the tower on the show grounds indicated that the meet was definitely on; a red flag meant that the meet might only possibly take place; a black flag meant the meet would not happen. Like many of the cities that hosted air meets after 1909, Dordreght was a medieval city, over a thousand years old. The city occupies a key position in Dutch history, being the site of both a political assembly in 1572 that played an important role in the formation of the independent Netherlands, and a religious gathering that ordered a Dutch translation of the Bible, which translation became the basis for the Dutch currently spoken in the Netherlands. Many poster artists employed to create advertisements for air meets often juxtaposed images of modern airplanes and the air meet-host city’s famous historic landmarks. However, the Dordreght poster uses another common theme in aviation poster art: the airplane vs. older technology, such as the train in this case, to excite the audience. Before the airplane, the train was the fastest land-based transportation and had long been seen as a key symbol of modernity and the importance of technology. However, in the face of the new machines of aviation, the locomotive and its cars were fast becoming a symbol not of tomorrow, but of yesterday. Superseding it, and outpacing it, was the airplane. Here are shown both a Voisin-style biplane and a monoplane most likely drawn after a Blériot model, although the high wing dihedral (the angle of the wings to the fuselage) is a feature found on some early Fokker monoplanes, assuming the artist is attempting an accurate rendering, versus one that is more stylized. The blue background and darker blue train blend together, accented by the yellow slashes in the sky. The aircraft, however, immediately attract the viewer’s eye, rendered as they are in white, as well as being larger than the train, closer to the viewer. While the train chugs steadily along in a line, the airplanes seem not only to keep pace with it, but also to be ready to fly out of the poster, presenting a dynamic image of technological advancement outpacing the old symbol of progress on the ground below. |
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