What is the difference between art and advertising?

[Darth Rotor]

When I was in the 11th grade, I had a major crush on my English teacher, a just-out-of-college bouncy little blonde named Rita. Since I really didn't need much help learning English literature (I'd read the whole textbook in the first month) I spent the whole class for over a week making a picture of her. I'd study her intently and add a line or two, erase and do it again. I sat in the back of the class so nobody would see me. I never showed the picture to anybody. I have no idea what happened to it.

That was art. Maybe not good art, but it was art. It was not for selling. It was not for propaganda. It was not for any purpose but my own personal satisfaction.

Okay, I have done as you asked (without having to be asked twice) and given you an example.

Now, asking for the third time, will you give us the definition you use for "selling" when you say "all art is selling something"?

*Truman Capote voice*

That's not art, that's drawing.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Me, Volatile, Athon, several others.

Want another example? Without looking at the information on this painting (which of course, is not part of the art), tell me what this art is selling?

[qimg]http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/a000151brd.jpg[/qimg]

To me, nothing, as I ain't buyin' it.

If I may indulge in a bit of Clausian logic:

If I don't want to buy it
You can't sell it (sell meaning something I will want to buy)
So it ain't art
Since all art sells something

Am I close? Or did I screw up by providing a definition of sell?

Yes, you really want to portray me as dishonest and a liar.

No one is better at that than you. The petard is going to break if you keep hoisting yourself on it that way.

@ Nozed Avenger:

I'll bet the under on 24 pages, Claus seems to have found a new topic.

DR

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

To me, nothing, as I ain't buyin' it.

If I may indulge in a bit of Clausian logic:

If I don't want to buy it
You can't sell it (sell meaning something I will want to buy)
So it ain't art
Since all art sells something

Am I close? Or did I screw up by providing a definition of sell?

No one is better at that than you. The petard is going to break if you keep hoisting yourself on it that way.

@ Nozed Avenger:

I'll bet the under on 24 pages, Claus seems to have found a new topic.

DR

That's the problem - Claus refused to define his non-traditional use of the term "sell". So we were never sure what his argument was.

He seems to have abandonded this thread and his argument.

 

[Tricky]

*Truman Capote voice*

That's not art, that's drawing.

You didn't know Miss Atkinson. Anything with her in it was art. Had she actually been selling, I would have definitely been buying.

To me, nothing, as I ain't buyin' it.

If I may indulge in a bit of Clausian logic:

If I don't want to buy it
You can't sell it (sell meaning something I will want to buy)
So it ain't art
Since all art sells something

Am I close? Or did I screw up by providing a definition of sell?

Actually, you're on the right track, but you're not there yet. The final step is to have someone use your definition in a response to you and for you to deny that is how you defined it. But you're close, Grasshopper.

I'll bet the under on 24 pages, Claus seems to have found a new topic.

That's a bet you'd almost certainly win. We're running out of gas here. Twice I have said I was abandoning the thread, and twice I have made a liar out of myself. (That's right Claus. I'm a liar. Unlike you, I admit it.) But when you guys come back with funny stuff, it just seems wrong to let it pass without at least a response letting you know it was appreciated.

Now I'm really done with this thread. Unless I'm not.

 

[NoZed Avenger]

@ Nozed Avenger:

I'll bet the under on 24 pages, Claus seems to have found a new topic.

It looks like I was overly optimistic on everyone's stamina.

 

[Michelle Lyon]

Advertising is art, but not all art is advertising. The line is very blury between the two.

Consider still ads, such as those found in magazines. There's the setting or backdrop, lighting, models, makeup, costumes (or lack thereof), props, posing. After that there's digital graphics and publishing. That's all art, in the formal sense. It's photography. Often you have to consider where the art will be located; billboard ads, for example, are created very differently than a magazine ad. (There's one near a freeway in my city for a mortuary that reads "Slow down! We can wait!" If that were printed in a magazine it wouldn't make much sense.) If you consider something like TV commercials then it's much of the same, but more like performance art, rather than visual art, because it involves acting and film making. Instead of considering the location of the art, you have to consider the audience. Who is watching that station or that show, and at what time of day or night, and would that group be interested in the product? It's a lot to think about.

Advertising ceases to become art and instead becomes a parasite, due to the intentions of the advertisers. In America, we are all trained from babies that we have to buy stuff. Advertisers often create false needs in order to sell their product. For example. People need clothes to protect themselves against the elements. But do they have to be designer clothes, and is a person really "nobody" if they don't have that designer in their closet? Do people really "need" bleached white teeth? Do they really "need" to commute in an SUV when a Focus will get them there just as quickly? Do people really "need" Viagra to survive, or wear an iPod to be noticed? No. But advertising often makes it seems like we need this stuff, and has us trained to believe that we face social rejection, isolation, practically even death, if we don't have it. There's an entire research industry where people go and measure social and psychological trends, and then advertisers adjust according to those trends, using them against the population in order to sell stuff that people don't really need to be buying. Parasites.

 

[Hooloovoo]

I look at it this way:
Art is the object, advertising is what the object is doing. They aren't the same thing, but they go hand in hand. There is art that advertises. Art is a product, advertising a service.

Advertising art is very collectible nowadays. Watch Antiques Roadshow, and you'll see lots of it. The people collecting these objects collect them because they like the objects themselves, whether or not they love what the object is promoting.

But then again...
Art is an undefinable term. It's so subjective, what it is differs with each person. Any discussion I've been involved in that requires a concrete definition of art gets messy pretty fast. It's gotten to the point where I don't particularly care to use the word art much. I like to be more specific, and say "painting" or "novel" or "symphony", since those things do have specific definitions. Then the merit of these things can be discussed with a little more objectivity.
I came across this thread on my work break, and haven't had time to read through every post. If my point has been made here already, sorry for being redundant. Just wanted to toss my hat into the ring.

 

[Hooloovoo]

Wow. I just had a chance to read over this thread. Dang. The train derailed and spilled toxic sludge into the local water supply. Looks like all these posts are pretty old, and everybody's moved on to other things. Darn. This could have been interesting.

 

[Tricky]

Wow. I just had a chance to read over this thread. Dang. The train derailed and spilled toxic sludge into the local water supply. Looks like all these posts are pretty old, and everybody's moved on to other things. Darn. This could have been interesting.

You're new here. We do get toxic from time to time. Still, we always welcome a fresh perspective... unless it disagrees with ours.

 

[Hooloovoo]

Toxic sludge can lead to good things, like mutant superheroes.

 

[Tricky]

Toxic sludge can lead to good things, like mutant superheroes.

Will everybody just shut up about those damn turtles? I'm the biggest, blooest superhero.

 

[kittynh]

TIME

only difference.

And I'm a professional.

 

[kittynh]

for instance....

since I was asked for further details.

Maxfield Parrish

Advertising paid the bills. A lot of his most beloved works are simply what was refered to as "Calendar art" and the "art" part was with a small "a" for a reason.

Time passes and a lot of the other stuff falls by the wayside, and Maxfield Parrish emerges as an artist. A lot of people thought "true" artists that worked near him in Vermont and New Hampshire have images barely known today and certainly barely respected and considered dated and well forgotten.

in a way, our generation can never define what is "art" or "good art" or "lasting art of value" for the contemporary art of our generation. That's up to the next.

And talk about advertising art. Warhol was a PRO. He advertised and sold himself along with his art, even more than Picasso. But he was good. And standing the test of time so far, though it's early days yet. When I read the title I was "well ofcourse artist advertise and sell their art and who they are..." It didn't occur to me it was about anything else. You just don't paint something and wait for your genius to be discovered. You have to go out and let people know about it! REmbrant was not just a "master" when it came to painting. He had a lot of the angles figured out. Time has shown him to hold up over his other fellow painters that we find as footnotes in textbooks.

 

[NoZed Avenger]

TIME

only difference.

And I'm a professional.

But surely you admit that Beauty is Truth and Truth, Beauty?

And Art can be described as either showing Truth (through whichever artistic medium you like), or alternatively showing Beauty.

Therefore, Art must be True (either way).

But we know that Advertising is sometimes "false advertising" (see, e.g., the "Wonderbra," etc.)

Therefore, Advertising CANNOT BE Art.


QED

 

[Spung]

How about when artists redeploy standard advertising vocabulary? Like Barbara Kruger . That's fun. Or Jasper Johns' Ballantine ale cans, or Warhol's soup? The Kruger, say, is formally identical to advertising. What happens?


Reading the last couple of pages a bit more. . . the word 'sell' is so loaded. Avertir. Advertere. . . to turn someone towards. . .
Volatile, would you agree that art, if it does not 'sell' something, 'argues' for something, implicitly or not? Does the work of Rothko argue for abstract expressionism? Does it argue against old school representation? Does it argue for spirituality?

 

[Spung]

Actually. . . unpopular opinion. Re-reading the thread, I think with some semantic differences (I would not use the word 'sell'--a can of worms-- but rather the term 'advertise' in the OP) I think I kind of agree with Claus on a couple of general points. I would not have any qualms about explaining that any art (whether it is aware of it or not) "sells" ideas. Among other things, a work of art makes claims for what art encompasses (which changes very frequently) or what art is "for".

I look at it this way:
Art is the object, advertising is what the object is doing. They aren't the same thing, but they go hand in hand. There is art that advertises. Art is a product, advertising a service.

(I like this. I like the idea of the definition of art as a fluid thing, but the functions of art varying widely. "Art" as a verb, in some ways)

 

[volatile]

Volatile, would you agree that art, if it does not 'sell' something, 'argues' for something, implicitly or not? Does the work of Rothko argue for abstract expressionism? Does it argue against old school representation? Does it argue for spirituality?

I wouldn't say it "argues", in that sense. All art works. All art actively affects. I don't think it makes sense to say that all art argues though - because you end up with the same problems as you do if you use the word sell.

 

[Spung]

But, say. . . You bright up Manet's Zola, which surprised me because . . . well, I *can* think of worse examples, but talk about an agenda in a painting! The painting style itself (I just did Greenberg again so that essay's in my head) screams "new and improved and nothing like your dad's portraiture." And all the little bits of very hip Japonisme and the Olympia in the corner (sort of mutual pimping--"see, this successful and ultra-modern writer, who I am painting and who is having me paint him, likes *my* work") and the little Velasquez ("see, I'm down with the old masters, too. . . let me show my Raimondi quotations!"). It's like a manifesto poster for the new France.

 

[volatile]

It has an agenda, but that agenda does not represent a sale by any conventional definition of the word "sale" (or even "argument", to use your later turn of phrase).

Of course the painting has an agenda - that's why I brought it up - but in what way does it make sense to call the work that painting is so obviously doing "selling"? That's the crux of our disagreement with Claus - he failed in any coherent way to explain in what way the word "selling" was appropriate.

Can you?

 

[volatile]

Oh - and while I remember. You mentioned Warhol's work. Warhol's appropriation of the visual tools of advertising was entirely to produce something that formally resembled advertising but wasn't selling anything at all. In fact, Warhol's Brillo boxes might be the very best example of why not all art is advertising, or indeed selling something.