Normandie

Why it works

An ocean liner drawn like a monument. To launch the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique's Normandie, a floating showcase of French Art Deco and engineering and the largest liner yet built, A.M. Cassandre ignored the conventional three-quarter view of a ship at sea. He set the viewer low, dead ahead of the bow, so the black hull rises symmetrically up the sheet; a few tiny gulls are the only clue to scale, and the ship's name anchors the bottom like ballast. There are no tonnage figures and no catalogue of comforts, only size, power and calm. It is studied as the travel poster reduced to pure sensation. Within months the Museum of Modern Art gave Cassandre a solo exhibition, with Normandie among the posters, and its curator wrote that his work could "make more incredible the incredible size of an ocean liner". The V&A calls it arguably his most iconic work and the single best-known image of the ship.