Images for sale at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (1983)
Boilerhouse Project: Images for Sale: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
It is disquieting to consider what impact this exposure has had upon the health of the psyche. Standing in the middle of the maze-like exhibition visually bombarded by slogans and images (most of which refer to other images and myths rather than to reality) and aurally bombarded by a confusion of sounds (the music and voices of a dozen TV commercials), one experiences a sense of vertigo, a "hall-of mirrors" effect. The media-saturated environment in which we now live is made manifest. Is it a consumers’ Utopia or a nightmare?
Because of the manner in which the items were originally selected, a sense of randomness is created. The sheer variety of images, products and media is bewildering. Certainly, the show conveys an impression of the richness of the raw material but, because the advertising of a single product, such as lager, is not explored in detail, it is impossible to judge how lager advertising has changed in style and method in twenty years.
The narrowness and bias which results from any display of award-winning graphics is revealed when one considers what is missing from the show: cigarette adverts are featured but not anti-smoking public health adverts; political/election advertising is ignored; the 1968 sit-in by students at Hornsey College of Art is mentioned in a caption but the posters produced by the students do not appear; in 1976 and ’77 the most original and vitriolic British graphics were the Punk montages for the Sex Pistols produced by Jamie Reid. No Punk graphics enliven the show. One of the few items on display which fulfilled a positive social function—as against simply serving the god of profit—was an animated cartoon film [The Maggot] against heroin addiction in American black ghettos made in 1973 by George Dunning.
It is important that exhibitions such as "Images for Sale" are mounted, and that the V & A addresses itself to contemporary design and the role of state-funded museums in relation to modern industry, but the possibility of a critical, objective and historical understanding of design is constantly undermined by the Boilerhouse’s dependence upon private sponsorship. (A clear conflict of interest occurs here: Habitat, Terence Conran’s firm, is succinctly praised in "Images for Sale" and the Boilerhouse Project is funded by Conran.) By contrast, a national museum could in this role be exploring fundamental issues about the nature and values of our consumer society. It could be a force for change instead of merely confirming the world as it is.
Boilerhouse Project: Images for Sale: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
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