Artists, advertising & the borders of art (1995)
She recounts how the accelerating use of photographs in magazines brought to an end "the golden age" of American illustration and how the impact of "Learn to Draw" television programmes in the 1950s fostered the growth of amateur art. Andy Warhol claimed that he learnt to draw as a result of watching such programmes.
Today we are familiar with painters and sculptors who follow Andy Warhol’s example by expanding sideways into other media. (Damien Hirst’s forays into advertising, pop music video and feature film-making are recent examples.) We are also aware of increasing numbers of cross-overs, plus signs of a convergence of the various arts and media. Bogart notes that similar developments occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, but her surprising conclusion is that this produced a narrowing and stiffening of the ideological borders of fine art. (Clement Greenberg’s art criticism was a key factor here.) She contends that those parameters of art "still inform people’s conceptions of what is art and fuels their prejudices against what is ’not’ ". Certainly, it is surprising how the relative autonomies of the realms of fine art and mass culture persist in spite of ever-increasing cross border traffic. As Bogart puts it: "For all the hoopla about the breakdown of borders, the notion of ’fine’ art continues to structure some formidable intellectual hierarchies".
Michele Bogart’s book is a welcome addition to the existing literature on the art/mass media interface; it will be of particular value to art history students writing essays on American art, illustration, advertising, and corporate patronage.
ads by artdesigncafe
Facebook comments
