What is the difference between art and advertising?

[martu]

What work of art exists which isn't a form of advertising?

Here:

Art

 

[CFLarsen]

I'm not suggesting that some art does not have the ability to advertise. I'd argue that some propaganda pieces could be intended to advertise, as could some religious works.

Which propaganda pieces do not advertise?

Which religious works do not advertise?

I'm saying that not all art is necessarily advertising. Advertising requires the intention of inciting a behaviour, not just elliciting an emotion.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you can have an emotion that does not incite a behavior?

That's not the definition I used. Stating 'who made it' is not the same as inciting a behaviour in the target.

I also included other things. However, "who made it" is, in the case of graffiti, an expression of "hey, we're cool! If you admire it, copy it! Let's have a graffiti slam!"

Graffiti painters are hugely competitive.

That's not advertising.

Really? Why not?

So? I didn't ask for a definition for graffiti.

I didn't post it as a definition of graffiti, but as an example of how graffiti is advertising.

Whoa cowboy. Let's start with what you think 'advertise' means first. If you think it's any form of art that says anything at all, then show where you get that definition.

No. Let's start with your claim which hinges on your definition of "advertise". You claimed that:

art can exist which isn't a form of advertising.

Whatever definition of advertising I use has nothing to do with your claim and your definition of "advertise".

So,

What work of art exists which isn't a form of advertising?

Here:

Art

Why is that art?

 

[martu]

Why is that art?

I like to look at it, it makes me think and I find the construction of it quite elegant.

To me it's art. Do you disagree? If so why?

 

[HarryKeogh]

Well, they can both sell lots of bad soup.

 

[CFLarsen]

I like to look at it, it makes me think and I find the construction of it quite elegant.

To me it's art. Do you disagree? If so why?

Oh, it isn't up to me to define what is art to you.

But, given your description of what is art: What is not art - to you?

 

[volatile]

If you want a professional opinion (I'm an art historian) - all advertising is art; not all art is advertising. That's the formalist model, anyway.

This argument becomes semantic and uninteresting pretty quickly.

 

[athon]

Which propaganda pieces do not advertise?

Which religious works do not advertise?

Another example of your fetish of turning everything into an argument. Fine, all propaganda could be considered advertising, by way of it inciting the target to behave in an intended fashion.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you can have an emotion that does not incite a behavior?

Yes. Not all all emotions make you behave in an intended way. What behaviour do you think Turner wanted the target to perform through his painting 'The Fighting Temeraire'? Or Da Vinci through the Mona Lisa?

I also included other things. However, "who made it" is, in the case of graffiti, an expression of "hey, we're cool! If you admire it, copy it! Let's have a graffiti slam!"

So all graffiti is painted with that as an implicit challenge? Evidence? Or is this more of your naive assumptions?

Really? Why not?

You're yet to show that it is. Burden of proof is on you, sunshine. You're stating that graffiti is advertising - you need to a) provide a definition of advertising which isn't just your make-believe interpretation, and b) show that graffiti is commonly accepted as subscribing to this accepted definition. Going on your track record of 'engagement' and 'drum-sticks', I won't hold my breath that you have a clue of either point.

I didn't post it as a definition of graffiti, but as an example of how graffiti is advertising.

Please quote where in that wiki article that it said graffiti is advertising. Simply because 'it is competitive' does not mean it is always painted with the intention of inciting a behaviour in the observer.

No. Let's start with your claim which hinges on your definition of "advertise". You claimed that:

You don't have any evidence? I guess once again, you lose then. Sorry, it's your claim. 'All art is a form of advertising'. I'm asking you to define advertising and then show how all art does this. You haven't done that.

Notice a pattern in your arguments, Claus? You claim to understand a word, embarrass yourself by misunderstanding it, then fail to show where it is used in the manner you believe. I'm asking for evidence, which I'm sure you'll fumble to provide some nonsense links and then later point to some post in defence of your claim which fails to support anything you've said. If you can't support your claim in the next post, we might just skip to the part where it's accepted by the majority that you're once again stirring the pot and speaking through your arse.

Whatever definition of advertising I use has nothing to do with your claim and your definition of "advertise".

So,

What work of art exists which isn't a form of advertising?

Why is that art?

This is simple - back up your claim, Claus, without trying to spin this around. Where is your evidence? I'm calling you out, squire.

Athon

 

[athon]

If you want a professional opinion (I'm an art historian) - all advertising is art; not all art is advertising. That's the formalist model, anyway.

This argument becomes semantic and uninteresting pretty quickly.

Thanks Volatile. I don't suppose you can seal the statement with a link? (I believe you, but it'd be nice to have the red stamp just to make it official).

Oh, and 'semantics' is just Latin for 'Claus'.

Athon

 

[Foolmewunz]

If you want a professional opinion (I'm an art historian) - all advertising is art; not all art is advertising. That's the formalist model, anyway.

This argument becomes semantic and uninteresting pretty quickly.

Bolded portion: You noticed that, did you?

Especially if it all hinges on "every message, every concept, every idea promoted in a work of "art" is, by definition, advertising." Which is not a concept I agree with, but can see no point in arguing.

 

[martu]

Oh, it isn't up to me to define what is art to you.

But, given your description of what is art: What is not art - to you?

Very true - so do you think it is art?

Peristalsis isn't art for one.

 

[calebprime]

Is this?

Claus, everyone knows what art is. Art is bought because they relate to it or find it personally relevant, interesting, ironic, humorous, or conversationally fun. Art itself is simply a more very advanced, abstract form of communication to varying psychological depth. Typically associations which require volumes of words are summed up instantly through imagery. Imagery, sound and motion being however ideal.

Try for example, to summarize the force of nature that is Claus Larson, the destroyer of keyboards, into colorless shapeless words. Pages would be required to fully frame - even among an audience of strong atheists, the gravity of the futility. You have to be there with a migraine headache and a sense self-idiocy, catching yourself staring at five pages of failed exchange over common sense, and what instead of a man could very be Curious George hunched over his desk with his nose buried in a mountain of cocaine with an advocacy of evolution and a look of resentment of the saying about a million monkeys typing in his eyes.

SirPhillip is in good form this morning. I especially liked the Clint Eastwood.

My friend and I were so horrified by billboards of Benetton ads in the Boston area that we seriously considered defacing them. We even bought paint & ski-masks and had a plan. He considered it idolatry. I considered it a worse-than-tasteless blurring of the line between company promotion and exploiting images of suffering. This ad, also, makes me sick. If Benetton were a charity, I would still think these ads were over the line.

actually, by making the grievers look swinish, this image is disgusting on every possible level--which, although interesting, is just too...too.

2¢.

 

[Wowbagger]

Advertising usurps the concept of art, in order to parasite our minds, for the purpose of selling something.

Not all artwork is parasitic, but most forms of advertising utilize parasitic artwork.

 

[volatile]

Thanks Volatile. I don't suppose you can seal the statement with a link? (I believe you, but it'd be nice to have the red stamp just to make it official).

Oh, and 'semantics' is just Latin for 'Claus'.

Athon

Well, I don't want to go into a derailing history of formalist debates on what is and isn't art. Suffice to say, the formalist defence of advertising as art would be that advertising uses the same forms as visual art does. In other words, advertising is art because it looks like art. Simplistic, but there you have it.

Take for example this quote (from '"Form" in Art' by Reuben Abel (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 32, No. 3, (Mar., 1972), pp. 371-376)):

"Analysis of the term "work of art" indicates that the object must be formed: that is, that materials must be arranged, or composed, or organized, or manipulated intentionally, by a person, who does so for the sake of doing so (regardless of whatever other motives he may also have), and with the objective of evoking a response from some other person to him."

Advertising clearly fulfils this (formalist) definition.

A quick browse of academic sources also dug up this quote, from 'Uneasy Courtship: Modern Art and Modern Advertising' by Jackson Lears (American Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 1, Special Issue: Modernist Culture in America (Spring, 1987), pp. 133-154), which illustrates less the formal defence but a more political and practical defence:

"And nearly all critics agree that the conflict between modernist art and modern advertising has disappeared - if it ever existed. The cruder version of this argument asserts that modernist art has always reflected the cultural style of capitalist modernization: the restless experimentation, the unrelenting contempt for established forms and values."

This is perhaps what Claus is getting at - contemporary art, existing, as it does, within the art market, has similar if not precisely parallel concerns to advertising.

This book looks interesting, and relevant: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en...KQNMX&sig=ghn6sWKREXu8aPR306eYP16hR7o#PPR5,M1

 

[Piscivore]

SirPhillip is in good form this morning. I especially liked the Clint Eastwood.

My friend and I were so horrified by billboards of Benetton ads in the Boston area that we seriously considered defacing them. We even bought paint & ski-masks and had a plan. He considered it idolatry. I considered it a worse-than-tasteless blurring of the line between company promotion and exploiting images of suffering. This ad, also, makes me sick. If Benetton were a charity, I would still think these ads were over the line.

actually, by making the grievers look swinish, this image is disgusting on every possible level--which, although interesting, is just too...too.

2¢.

So in other words, it is a very powerful artistic image for you?

 

[volatile]

So in other words, it is a very powerful artistic image for you?

Indeed.

Those Bentton ads are definitely artistic. And successfully so.

 

[Loss Leader]

I hold that advertising has the goal of portraying a product favorably, usually for monetary, but sometimes for ego reasons. It may and usually does contain art, but that is not its purpose. Art needs no purpose.

Of course art has a purpose. The purpose of art is for the artist to convey the message, "this is how I see the world." Advertising has the same purpose, "This is how we at the Widget Corporation see the world."

Both attempt to open the viewer's mind to a new way of thinking about the universe. There is no difference between the two. In both cases, the viewer alone decides the value of the message.

 

[calebprime]

So in other words, it is a very powerful artistic image for you?

It sure is. If I saw it in a museum, without any connection to Benneton, I would say "Wow, that's interesting. Is there any glimmer of hope, or beauty or morality to be found in the artist's work, so that I don't have to just feel awful? Something to justify the shock?"

Now, for all I know, Benneton has used every penny they've earned, somehow, to treat AIDS patients, or something. I don't know.

In general, media is too aggressive. It's an arms race against the increasing dullness of the viewer's sensitivity and perhaps intelligence. Or maybe just against their increasing hardness. That's too bad in itself. Everywhere, it's pump up the volume, punch up the picture.

 

[Tricky]

Advertising usurps the concept of art, in order to parasite our minds, for the purpose of selling something.

Not all artwork is parasitic, but most forms of advertising utilize parasitic artwork.

This was a very good example of advertising that is not, under most definitions, art. It could even be a "fill-in-the-blank" form. And classified ads are quite numerous. Some include some "eye-catching" graphic, but many are just information.

There is nothing artistic about the classified section of your local newspaper. "For sale, 1979 Chrysler, 98,000 miles, runs, best offer". Ads can contain art. Art must contain artistic expression.

And as Martu points out, it would be hard to argue that abstract art advertises anything. Look at the works of Mark Rothko*. Hell, look at Van Goph. What was "Wheat Field with Crows" advertising? Suicide?


*Funny story. There is a small gallery in Houston called the Rothko Chapel. I had never seen any of Rothko's work but I knew he was a famous artist, and one day as I was strolling by, I decided to pop in. I went in the chapel and all I saw was a circular room with black panelling. I went out to the front lobby and asked the attendant, "Are the paintings out on loan?" She gave me the look that a snobby art student gives an ignorant philistine and said, "Those are the paintings." Can you blame me for being confused?

 

[NoZed Avenger]

Try for example, to summarize the force of nature that is Claus Larson, the destroyer of keyboards, into colorless shapeless words. Pages would be required to fully frame - even among an audience of strong atheists, the gravity of the futility. You have to be there with a migraine headache and a sense self-idiocy, catching yourself staring at five pages of failed exchange over common sense, and what instead of a man could very be Curious George hunched over his desk with his nose buried in a mountain of cocaine with an advocacy of evolution and a look of resentment of the saying about a million monkeys typing in his eyes.

See? This is art.

 

[calebprime]

T
*Funny story. There is a small gallery in Houston called the Rothko Chapel. I had never seen any of Rothko's work but I knew he was a famous artist, and one day as I was strolling by, I decided to pop in. I went in the chapel and all I saw was a circular room with black panelling. I went out to the front lobby and asked the attendant, "Are the paintings out on loan?" She gave me the look that a snobby art student gives an ignorant philistine and said, "Those are the paintings." Can you blame me for being confused?
[qimg]http://www.rothkochapel.org/NTryptich.jpg[/qimg]

Maybe kittnh or someone can comment here--something's wrong. Either the color seriously faded or changed on the paintings or the picture's weird.

His stuff was all about color harmonies, so if it wasn't right, it was nothing.

But I don't see it--I don't have a trained eye. I don't know whether these images, for example, are right:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=rothko+pics&btnG=Google+Search

eta: every other source I checked looked the same. The panels are described as "black but colored"...