Bouillon Kub

The contrast between the monochrome background and the central image in this work is immediately striking: a black bull’s head looming up from a bright yellow rectangle. The subject is a bouillon cube made by Kub in a red-and-yellow packet, positioned in front of the bull’s right eye. The opposition of light and dark employed here is one of the most obvious characteristics of Leonetto Cappiello’s work. Cappiello, along with Jules Chéret and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, is seen as one of the most important innovators and pioneers of poster art. Until that point, posters had been no more than simple bearers of information, text with or without a picture. Expressive silhouettes in unconventional colors are another conspicuous aspect of Cappiello’s work. In a poster he created for Chocolat Klaus in 1903, he used the image of an Amazon dressed in green, sitting on a red horse. This was the first time the public had seen a red horse. The impact was huge. The publisher and printer Vercasson even received reactions from abroad. In this poster, the relationship between bouillon and bull is depicted both powerfully and ironically. Our attention goes to the large, dark head with its one eye glowing, white and sinister. It’s almost as though the animal senses that it will end up as a bouillon cube.