The exhibition “A Picture for All Occasions” will run in the Feld-Haus from October 1, 2023. Until March 17, 2024, everything revolves around trading cards: from Stollwerck to Liebig and Panini to Pokémon.
Trading cards have long since achieved cult status in pop culture. YouTuber and influencer Paul Logan even received an entry in the Guinness Book of Records last year for purchasing a rare Pokémon card worth $5,275,000. Music stars like Snoop Dogg, Drake, Justin Bieber and Steve Aoki also indulge in the sport of collecting. In addition to Pokémon cards, sports cards are particularly popular with celebrities. And the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art is showing the exhibition “Baseball Cards from the Collection of Jefferson R. Burdick” until next January.
However, the success story of the collector’s picture goes back to the end of the 19th century: companies early on relied on the special appeal of so-called “giveaways”, because small gifts maintain friendship and bind customers. The calculation worked out, and as a result an almost feverish passion for collecting the colored advertising pictures arose. Matching scrapbooks soon appeared that you could either buy or receive in exchange for vouchers. The range of products that were advertised with collector’s images was enormous and included a variety of foods and beverages. For example, the “Liebig’s Fleisch-Extract” brand trading cards first appeared in 1875. When you purchased the product, you received them free of charge as a promotional gift at the store. The so-called “Liebigbilder” were so popular that even fakes were put into circulation. In order to further stimulate the flourishing business with their vending machine chocolate, the Cologne company Stollwerck also published collector’s pictures from the 1890s. While the artists of the Liebigbilder are largely unknown today, Stollwerck’s marketing strategy included also engaging well-known artists, including Max Liebermann, Otto Modersohn and Adolph Menzel. For this purpose, well-funded artist competitions were organized.
Variety of topics: from music to fashion
The extraordinary variety of themes of the trading card motifs is remarkable. It ranges from art and music, technology and science, historical events and visions of the future, fairy tales and fashion to the world of theater and film stars. Thanks to modern printing processes, they could be produced in enormous numbers and were particularly widespread in middle-class and urban society, including outside of Germany. Its importance for the late 19th and early 20th centuries can therefore hardly be overestimated. Last but not least, the cheap pictures made a significant contribution to the formation of the canon of European art history. As a reflection of their respective times, they also convey worldviews, so that the advertising cards were much more than a harmless advertising medium and were also used by the National Socialists to convey a colonial worldview and for propaganda purposes.
The collectible pictures experienced a new heyday with the appearance of the first football sticker books from Panini in the 1970s. The publisher successfully expanded its repertoire in the 80s and 90s, including collections of comics, animated series and Disney films. In 1999, the Pokémon phenomenon finally conquered Europe with trading cards, anime and merchandising products. While there were originally 154 different “pocket monsters,” there are now over 1,000 motifs on countless Pokémon cards that are currently being eagerly swapped in the schoolyards by a new generation of schoolchildren. David, the youngest borrower of our exhibition, is six years old.
Over 70 exhibits and a great supporting program
With over 70 exhibits, some of which are rare or shown for the first time, from our own collection and from private collections, the current exhibition in the Feldhaus gives visitors an exciting and nostalgic insight into the colorful and wide field of trading cards. What role did the collectible image play in popular culture before and after 1900? And what is the basis of the fascination of (children’s) passion for collecting even today?
The exhibition project is accompanied by an attractive supporting program with Pokémon family tours, curator tours and a scientific symposium. It was created in cooperation with the Collaborative Research Center 1472 “Transformations of the Popular” at the University of Siegen.
Further information about the exhibition is available on the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss website.
You can find photos for your reporting in our image archive.
2023-09-29 09:26:49
#Exhibition #picture #occasions #Neuss #Rhein
