French poster artists were honored and admired before commercialization degraded the craft

Evidence

At first the Parisian posters were welcome and admired. At the height of Jules Chéret’s success, the Third Republic awarded him the Legion of Honor, France’s highest civilian decoration. But he was prolific, and so were his imitators, resulting in an all-out “poster craze” that spread through Europe and the Americas. There were soon dozens of French poster artists, including those now more famous for fine art, like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, whose can-can dancers sitting on the laps of customers are unmistakable. At the start of the twentieth century, however, perhaps with foresight, Chéret and other artists began to abandon the business, while Toulouse-Lautrec died from a combination of alcoholism and syphilis. Despite this loss of artistry, the poster craze continued, overspreading the city without limit. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 67

Categorization

• CANDY: Toulouse-Lautrec dying of syphilis and alcoholism while the poster craze he helped spawn outlived him is a darkly amusing trivia nugget.