Artists, advertising & the borders of art (1995)
by Michele H. Bogart (University of Chicago Press).
John A. Walker (book reviewer)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".
Not wishing to repeat the familiar critique of consumer and corporate culture, Bogart ignores the writings on the mass media by such figures as Adorno, Baudrillard, Benjamin, Debord, McLuhan, MacDonald, and Marcuse. What she offers instead is a close reading of selected images, documentation of the flux of history via a series of case studies, plus a useful clarification of the terminology and concepts found in the discourse of artists, critics and patrons. Her account exposes the tensions that existed between the different professional groups—illustrators, photographers, painters, art directors, businessmen and their cultured wives, etc.—seeking "to claim jurisdiction over ’art’ as a means of acquiring authority and influence in their fields and in the broader culture".
Michele Bogart also explores the contradictions and compromises necessitated by the contrasting value systems of commerce and fine art (crudely, material versus spiritual values). There are many telling anecdotes concerning the problems that arose in relations between fine artists and advertisers when the artist’s images contained any critical or contentious content. One of the few American black artists employed to produce posters that showed poor blacks labouring was Jacob Lawrence. Such workers also appeared in Thomas Hart Benton’s regional realist paintings. However, it transpired that tobacco advertisers did not like such scenes because black consumers demanded more positive images; but these could not be shown because they would have offended white viewers in the Southern states! The result was that advertising executives recommended: "avoid the representation of Negroes entirely in tobacco advertising".
She also reviews the variety of ways in which visual imagery served the ends of business: illustrations by commercial artists used to advertise products; images by fine artists designed to serve the same purpose; pictures by famous fine artists reproduced in adverts; pictures designed for mass reproduction to be sold as calendars and art prints; images by fine artists that indirectly support a corporate identity; corporate art collections established as a form of public relations. In regard to the final point, Bogart cites Russell Lynes and David Ogilvy as advocating that businessmen, rather than supporting artists by means of advertising commissions, should buy the artist’s work. Here, surely, is the origin of the Saatchi collection.
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 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. (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".
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.
John A. Walker has written several books including Art in the age of mass media, Art & Celebrity, and Art & Artists on screen (1993/2010). He is also a co-author of Supercollector: A critique of Charles Saatchi (4th ed., 2010) with Rita Hatton.