Images for sale at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (1983)
artdesigncafé | café library | Published 08 November 2009
This review was previously published in Studio International vol 196, no 1001, August 1983, pp. 38-39.
(2009 note to readers: This review features the Boilerhouse Project, which was a display space devoted to modern design located within the basement of the museum that was sponsored by Terence Conran of the Habitat chain. It existed from 1982 to 1987.)
The Boilerhouse Project’s ’Images For Sale’ exhibition at the V & A consists of hundreds of award-winning examples of British graphic design—press adverts, book jackets, magazines, film and TV commercials, record covers, packaging and corporate design schemes—drawn from the archives of Designers and Art Directors of London on the occasion of its 21st birthday (D & AD was founded in 1962). Since the purpose of D & AD is the promotion of the graphic design profession, the works on display are designers’ designs and the exhibition as a whole is an advert for the art of advertising. An air of self-congratulation and nationalistic boasting pervades the show: "Our graphics are the best in the world, ten years ahead of America". Claims such as this are difficult to evaluate in the absence of foreign examples.
The bulk of the exhibits are displayed on a series of free-standing units all of which are equipped with TV monitors continuously showing old cinema and television commercials. Since each unit is devoted to a single year and these are then arranged in chronological order, the exhibition seems, at first sight, to present a history of recent British graphic design. In fact, what it presents is some of the raw material which could form the basis for such a history. What an exhibition of winning designs excludes, by definition, are mediocre and poor examples. A design historian would need to study representative examples of the period, not just the best examples. Indeed, unless poor examples are shown alongside the good it is difficult to grasp qualitative differences.
Some indication of the criteria used by the D & AD selectors in making their awards would have been helpful. For example, how relevant was function? From the functional point of view a successful advert is one which increases the sales of the product, but the exhibition includes White Horse whisky adverts which failed on this score. Presumably, these were judged "successful" on purely aesthetic grounds. Artistic advertising, the show made clear, cannot create a false market. It can however enhance and change the "image" of a product—elaborate packaging can transform a simple jar of jam into a luxury gift item.
Boilerhouse Project: Images for Sale: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
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