Can we class advertising as art?

MK1, welcome to A2K.

Are you talking about bilboard advertising or television advertising, or both.

If you include television advertising that I would say that some adverts I would go so far as to say are pieces of art.

Inparticular some the Guinness tv adverts have been visually stunning combine that with the audio I would consider them Art. (I refer to the galloping horses in the waves advert, which won advert of the year award)

Well everything is art - unless you want to define what you mean when you say 'art'.

Hi, my name is Art, and I was painted by Georgia O'Keefe. Does that make me a wallflower?

I think some advertising can be considered art, but most of it is just manipulative drivel, much like art. Hmm....

advertising is the most clever type art. Just as propaganda is an art form, so is the commercial; the billboard; the jingle; the music behind the succubus. We can ignore it, or we can fall prey to it, but we must acknowledge it as a beautiful painting of what we want, and what we don't want. Decide what you buy as based on what you don't buy. Then decide why you did either.

Tonight I watched Bill Clinton sell himself in the most fantastic way as he was interviewed by Peter Jennings. He called himself red and blue. What a salesman.

mk1, I'm glad you created this thread. Welcome to A2K.

I have read so many things, forums and seen posters where the "graphic designers" of this current world complain about "art" crossing over into design. How can it not?

Sure it is not fine art, but it is a form of eyecandy that is there to sell. If you like the image it portrays... just look at any perfume ad (oh the extravagance!) or jewelry ad (usually the more expensive brands, of course). You would think you were buying something to put in a case in the corner of your living room. But I am talking about deluxe items, not the common everyday thing.

Propaganda is a different thing to me and graphic design is honestly not the same thing to me as it was, say 40 to 50 years ago. Yes, lots of drivel, not enough thought. (By the way I am not condoning the deluxe items advertising as art - but it is certainly more attractive, (ohh shiny things), than, say a washing powder ad).

Of course it's art. Some ads are fine art, others schlock art, but it is art just the same. In advertising, the creator is sending out a message, through images, much like other artists.

Some "regular" artists create art for art's sake. Some are making a protest; Some are sending out personal messages to viewers; Some artists recreate their raison d'etre in art media. In advertising the intent is the same, only the motivation is commercial sales.

Had some trouble replying again, so this is just a test.

The art of advertising lies in, not the cleverness of the ad, but the remembrance of the product. Ask yourself, what commercial, billboard, etc. has induced you to buy the idea or the thing. Then analyze why or why not it worked.

I think only about 0.01% of ads can lay any real claim to be art - most are irritating and superficial - in fact they are probably more inclined to stop me buying a product than to send me rushing out with my money.

Not anything is art - though that is what conceptual artists may say - art is difficult to define but is more than the shallow eye candy (good words Ben) of ads - it is sustaining and has more to say.

Hi Viv

If everything isn't art then it should be easy to define what art is - care to have a go?

Vivien- I have seen plenty of works in galleries and museums that lay claim to being "art"................yet, to me they are irritating and superficial.

Just an observance--What made each person here choose the computer that they chose?

There's two different questions offered at the head of the topic. Whether advertising is art and whether it's fine art. It's definitely not fine art as it usually doesn't fullfill the definition. It is commercial art. Then there is the grey area inbetween of decorative art. It's all generally for sale, fine art often just to serious collectors and museums. There's the non-serious (who sometimes believes they are serious) collector who buys the decorative art in the realm of limited edition prints especially. The quality of the art is in subjective criticism -- the annual New York advertising art awards which is published in a book gives examples of commercial art that reaches for the status of fine art and usually in the beauty of its execution. Typography, for instance, has been compared to architecture. A good commercial design artist can create a superb composition solely using typography.

A good question, Letty. I did consider design when I bought my SONY laptop and I've often walked by displays of especially laptops in a store and was stopped in my tracks just by their looks. There was a WEGA screen Hewlitt Packard sitting on a shelf for sale recently at Sam's Club and I was really drawn to purchase it just for its looks.

So we have many categories of art:

1. Fine Art (paintings and drawings produced solely as a singular imagery not especially to please any particular audience but the artist themselves). This is qualifed with commissions -- for instance, John Singer Sargent's portraiture which he naturally strove to paint to please the client. He eventually got to the point of "no more portraits."

2. Design Art (products with a function, architecture, et al)

3. Decorative Art (meant to utilize as decoration with no other practical use).

4. Advertising art (meant to entice a customer into buying a product or service).

They all have overlaps into one another's domain from time to time and it all remains in the classification of art.

Well, Mr. Wizard, that was a great clarification. It's always best to stop and examine the sub categories. Were you ever a professor?

I think advertising can achieve the status of art - but lotsa advertising never makes it anywhere near that far as I'm concerned. For that matter, some grafitti qualifies as art in my book, though most of it it is just plain vandalism. I dunno really how one goes about makin' a wholly objective distinction - I mean, Michelangelo's Pieta and the Ronald that graces the lobby of a McDonalds are sculpture ... but why is one art and the other - at least its original - not? A lot of Irving Penn's advetising photography is considered art, while Andy Warhol's knock-offs of mundane advertising graphics are considered art, too, for instance. Obviously, intent isn't the criteria - Penn was shootin' to a client's specific product illustration orders, after all. The work of Maxfield Parrish, Gustav Klimt, Tolouse-Lautrec, Aubrey Beardsley, and any number of others was largely commercial in concept and execution, yet is considered art. Why? I just don't think there can be any objective answer. Art is art if its art. Somethings meant to be art don't get there, and some things hardly meant to be art make the grade.

Oh, and Letty - this 'puter? I didn't "buy" it, exactly - I built it. Well, assembled it from components, I guess would be a more accurate thing to say. I pretty much figure out what I want to accomplish, then figure out a way put it together. And I'm always rebuildin' 'em, swappin' this for that, addin' somethin' here, changin' somethin' there (and every once in a while I blow somethin' up - sparks and smoke are never a good sign ). That's the case with mosta my 'puters, other than the laptops and my handheld; those I buy strictly on performance and reputation. I don't much care what a thing looks like, I care more about how well it does what I want it to do. I'm pretty much a function-over-form sort, I guess.

Yes, Timber. What it does, but then what is doesn't do is a component of art. I was looking at a jet skim across the sky and thought:That is the only man made creature that belongs there, but what it "doesn't do" is very important.

No!

but Lightwizard comes close


I do feel it should have skill, insight, be sustaining and a great many other qualities - it isn't a science so you can't put it in a box and define it

very true - there's a horrible element of 'Emperors New Clothes' about some contemporary work, with awful rubbish presented and noone seems to say hold on - this is dreadful,

money! it had to be within my budget but with a large enough memory for storing lots of graphics (and even then I have to save to disc and remove them from the hard disc every so often). How about you Letty? I don't play computer games so the considerations for that don't apply.

Unlike some I have no skills to build my own but have someone who does that for me and adds and changes when I can afford it.

Vivien, I don't play computer games either, now. But my first computer was a Gateway, and I really bought it because of the ads. There was something about the cows.

You're right, however; art is not a science and neither is medicine. Madison Ave. , on the other hand, is rather a combination of Mr. Wizard's classification.