Joris-Karl Huysmans, A Dénicheur of Jules Chéret's Posters

This article analyzes Joris-Karl Huysmans's essay on French poster designer Jules Chéret (1836-1932) as an early example of art criticism devoted to mass-produced advertising posters. Huysmans's "Chéret" essay, published in the collection of art criticism, Certains (1889), interpreted late nineteenth-century poster imagery as capturing the sexual allure of the female figures represented. In doing so, Huysmans, a dénicheur—or cultivator of unconventional interpretations of popular culture—wedded decadent themes of the comic and sexuality in order to challenge bourgeois morality and capitalist forms of culture.