Absolute Vodka is running a campaign about what a more perfect world might be like. In this version Times Square is filled with paintings instead of ads. It’s easy to pick on Absolute because the subtext of most alcohol ads is that in a perfect world you are an alcoholic and no one will judge you for it (alcoholics, though a minority of the population, buy the most alcohol, so they are the primary demographic). This ad illustrates this principle perfectly because it is the bottle of Absolute that delivers us to this Utopic place. (Bag News Notes has more links to the other versions of the campaign)
More interesting to me is how the misperception that art and advertising inhabit different worlds is represented in the ad. It’s true that they are products of different micro systems of production, but art and advertising are similar in that they simultaneously promote particular worldviews. They are both the “propaganda” of their times. When Benjamin argued that mass media art lacked an “aura,” he saw potential for good and bad, the good being that aesthetics would be available to a wider audience, bad because of the potential for aesthetics to be in the service of war, as was the case with the Nazis. In any case, art historically is part of system of production and economics, and if not, it is in dialog with those forces. The Absolute ad appeals to a false sense of idealism that we would be better served by art than ads. I would like to agree with this sentiment, but after spending considerable time in the Vatican Museums, my sense is that in the old system of patronage, art served the vision of the Church, which to my cynical mind is a kind of business, too. Anything that involves the public is going to take money, and those who control the purse strings often will have the say as to what does and doesn’t get seen. In non-European systems, the situation is much different. If there is no word for art, for example, there is no concept of it in the sense that we think of art being separate from daily activity. Where did we make a wrong turn?
Not to generalize, but I think there are some examples of art that transcend economics. The few that come to mind are graffiti and street art, but even in those cases they can be a kind of advertising and branding, albeit for a different audience.
I’m not trying to be a downer here, but trying to elucidate some of our contradictory beliefs concerning the difference between advertising and art. There is one huge distinction, though, and that is the intention behind the creation. If we want to get to the crux of the issue, I’d start there.
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