At 08:58 AM 01/20/2001 -0800, Natasha wrote:
>I don't think of pop culture as having been deceptive.
[...[
. Pop art
>used humorous ideas, the imagery of comic strips and every day items (coke
>bottles, etc.) to express abstract formal relationships as a means to fuse
>elements of popular culture and high culture and to dim the limits between
>the two.
[...]
>Someone else who was there on the sidelines, correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm writing to agree with you rather than to correct you, and to add a
couple of comments about deception and what constitutes art. One reason I
liked the pop art of the 1960's was that it seemed to so effectively
capture the essence of the period, particularly with the images of
commercial products such as Coke and Campbell's soup. In addition to pop
art, there are the original products which (one might say) inspired the pop
art, and the advertisements which glorified the products.
IMO, future historians will look to advertisements as the most expressive
of the visual arts of the latter half of the 20th century. Many people
consider advertising to be nothing more than a form of mass deception. To
the contrary, I believe advertising is one of the most accurate reflections
of the spirit of the times. My doctoral dissertation (not completed...yet)
was on the psychological aspects of decision making, and it was in the
marketing journals that I consistently found the most sophisticated
research on what makes people decide and act as they do. A good marketing
strategist seeks to know human nature and work with it, rather than
fighting it and trying to re-shape it.
A personal note on the subject of advertising as art--one of my favorite
works of art of all time is a television ad that ran many years ago. I
believe it was advertising perfume--possibly Chanel. The ad is stored in my
memory in black and white--whether the actual ad was b&w or color I can't
be sure. It showed a woman diving into a rectangular pool and gliding under
water. As she glided, the shadow of an airplane passed over her body. Does
anyone else remember this ad?
Barbara
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