Artists, advertising & the borders of art (1995)
by Michele H. Bogart (University of Chicago Press).
artdesigncafé | café library | Published 15 November 2009
This review was previously entitled "Crossing boundaries" and published in Art Monthly, no. 196, May 1996, pp. 45-46.
This book’s title needed the qualifying adjective "American" because it is a history of the complex, constantly fluctuating relations between fine and commercial art in the United States from the late 19th Century to the 1960s. This period, of course, saw a massive expansion in pictorial mass media, in commodities and consumerism, and therefore increased employment opportunities for commercial artists and commissions for so-called "art-artists". While Michele Bogart’s book is original in many respects, it does not break entirely new ground: it was preceded by James S. Allen’s The Romance of Commerce and Culture of 1983, a perceptive account of the use of modern art to enhance the corporate image of the Container Corporation of America.
Michele Bogart, an academic and an art historian, has produced a densely factual and scholarly study (there are 105 pages of footnotes!), but some readers will regret that her analysis excluded British examples and did not come right up to date. Because the potential research material was so vast, Bogart decided to limit herself to the analysis of two-dimensional imagery. Over 100 examples are reproduced via small, rather grey illustrations. Some of the illustrations’ captions are extended commentaries.
Her book is organised in terms of six thematic sections dealing with: the status of illustrators; posters versus billboards; art directors and the art of commerce; the rise of photography; promotion and painting; and artists and organisations. Individuals whose works are discussed include Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, Georgia O’Keeffe, Stuart Davis, Rockwell Kent, Edward Steichen, Willem de Kooning, and Andy Warhol. However, it emerges that the author is not sympathetic to art-historical writing that foregrounds creators or artworks; what she prefers is an approach that views art as an activity.
Michele Bogart’s stated aims are: 1) to investigate the fluctuations of status among illustrators, poster producers, art directors, photographers, and painters in relation to conceptions and practices of fine and commercial art; 2) to explore the clash between the commodity status of art and the status of commodities in general; 3) to consider the issue of audience and the status of commercial art as popular art; 4) to take commercial artists seriously: "as historical actors who shape the course of history as much as more esteemed artists". The last aim is indeed a refreshing and much needed one. She is surely correct when she observes that our view of the development of American art is "skewed by overemphasis on major (fine) artists".
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