“Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century.” –Marshall McLuhan
The above quote by the well known communications theorist and writer, Marshall McLuhan, may be presumptuous and subjective, but it expresses a sentiment that became more prevalent as the twentieth century progressed that advertising was an actual art form.
The
very first ad to include a museum quality piece of artwork was run by
the Pear’s Soap Company in a campaign that ran from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. The
ad was adapted from a painting by Sir John Everett Millais, entitled A Child’s World.
The painting depicts the artist’s grandson, a young boy, after he has
just blown a soap bubble into the air through a clay pipe. The child
stares up in wonder as the bubble floats just above his head. The Pear’s
Soap Company bought the rights to the work and created a
chromolithographed form, over which they placed a headline and body copy
for the ad, as well as their logo on the bar of soap that lies at the
boy’s feet. (Twitchell, 1996, p. 185). Several authors who write
historically about art and advertising express that there was a great
amount of dismay felt by the artist, and some of the general public, over
the use of a piece of fine art painting in an
advertisement meant to generate sales for a product.
While this sentiment is still present, there are a number of times when fine art and advertising have crossed paths, both historically and in the modern day, which will be explored here further. Sometimes advertisers use existing pieces of fine art in advertisements to elevate the status of the product or to make the consumer laugh. Other times artists use images and figures from advertising in their fine art to make a commentary about American consumerism. Whatever the interaction, when the two disciplines combine it is powerful and often unexpected.
In the following posts, examples of each of these will be shown and discussed, and in addition, target audiences and appropriate modern-day media vehicles will be suggested for each of these placements based on what is believed to be the overall goal of the campaign.
Twitchell, James B. (1996). Adcult USA: The Triumph of Advertising in American Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
