I remember the first time I saw a banana ad. It was for Frozen 2, and it felt like the beginning of something, all advertising. I think it was in 2019 that I ate that banana. And look how far we’ve come. This year’s blockbuster The Lego Movie is essentially an ad for Lego in itself, but it’s also a biopic about rapper Pharrell Williams, who is also its creative director. Louis Vuitton. Where does culture end and advertising begin? They don’t want you to know.
When a genius like Frozen or Pharrell emerges, brands look for ways to capitalize on the attention. In the art world, crossover mostly occurs between artists and high fashion, as both areas attract a wealthy clientele. I was optimistic when these fashion collaborations started taking over the art world around the time of the Banana ads. Fashion money certainly defeats the nefarious sources of wealth that flow through the opaque art market. And artists and brands were collaborating to make cool stuff, like Anna Woodenberg’s sculpture for Balenciaga or Tyler Mitchell’s photo for Ferragamo at the Uffizi Gallery.
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But then it started to feel like art and marketing were starting to collapse into one thing. I was acutely aware of this over the summer when Carrie Mae Weems launched her Bottega Veneta campaign. In one black-and-white photo, A$AP Rocky sits at a kitchen table facing a mirror. The artist stands behind him, hands on his shoulders. Covered with the Bottega logo, the photo was released on Father’s Day and is a retelling, or remake, of Weems’ iconic 1990 “Kitchen Table” series.
Carrie Mae Weems: Untitled (Smoking Man), from the Kitchen Table Series, 1990.
The series included not only kitchen tables but also messages that were difficult to reconcile with the idea of luxury and Father’s Day. Through 20 images accompanied by words, we watch a black woman (Weems herself) become a mother and then watch that mother learn to be alone. The child’s father is nowhere to be seen, and she sits at the kitchen table in a sparsely painted white room. She is calm and resilient. In that nondescript room, Weems has constructed a rich world. As the series progresses, others join her at the table, enacting everyday conversations and domestic dramas. It’s always the same shot, with the lights hanging overhead and the door on the right, but the people in the pictures change, and the pictures on the wall behind them also change (including one with Malcolm X in it). Her evolving world inside the kitchen pays homage to the untold world that countless women have nurtured in countless kitchens.
It felt wrong to see such powerful artwork become an advertisement. There’s a lot of art that can be easily repackaged into just a style with little trade-off. However, this collaboration was more difficult to match the original. I don’t think this is a dig at Weems participating in something that many other artists are also participating in. It’s the opposite: it celebrates the power of the original series, which is clearly art, not just an aesthetic or a personal brand.
We used to call this “selling out,” when it was mostly wealthy white men for generations who could label things, to be creative and not have to compromise in order to eat. It was a time when it seemed possible. But as Jay Caspian Kang noted in The New Yorker last year, “People who came of age during or after the 2008 financial crisis are less likely to be Gen Xers who miss bands who ignored the attention of major record labels.” I don’t have the patience” Adbusters or whatever. ”
For weeks, “What do you think about Carrie Mae Weems’ Bottega ad?” was the question I posed at the dinner table I happened to be sitting at. The expected defense had more to do with the idea that it’s good for artists to get paid and that it’s good for brands to support the arts, rather than the image itself. Others added that artists might want to say yes, since brands are going to steal your ideas anyway, so you might as well get something out of it.
Unsurprisingly, Apple based its 2004-2008 iPod campaign on Robert Longo’s series of iconic 1980s silhouettes of figures swinging around in movements that can only be described as “dancing.” . Longo was frustrated, he later said in an interview with W magazine, but in 2010 he was approached by Bottega Veneta. He told W that they effectively said, “We want to hire you, not scam you.” And he jumped at the chance to snap a new photo of the businessman clearly in ecstasy. This time I was wearing Bottega.
Production photos from the video for Charli XCX’s single “360” (2024).
Photo Aidan Zamiri
A more 2020s-style rip-off occurs in Charli XCX’s “360” video. The video itself is also an advertisement for a Google product. One scene is a very interesting photo of Deanna Lawson. In a bleak living room with mismatched furniture and poor lighting (yet the subject is well-lit), a group of people face the camera, posing in a pose somewhere between candid and dramatic. I keep my body in shape with my posture. Her stomach protrudes from between her ornate clothes. Stilettos get stuck in thick carpet. This sense of discomfort instantly makes the scene seem more real and more staged. This is Lawson’s signature move.
Throughout the 20th century, photographers worked hard to gain respect as artists and came to see the camera as an artistic tool rather than just a commercial or mechanical one. With illustrations such as his gallery 291 and his diary Camera Notes, Alfred Stieglitz taught the generation of the 1910s that photography was as painterly and expressive as painting or sculpture. It made me think. In the 1970s, William Eggleston did something similar with color photography, arguing that the medium’s appeal lay not only in advertising but also in works of art.
It worked. Today, art photography is well differentiated from advertising, and photographers are toying with mixing the two. Tyler Mitchell, Juergen Teller and Ro Ethridge have had success.
Ping-pong between gallery and glossy paper. For Mitchell, this is about celebrating Black joy and excellence in all its forms, from the glamorous to the everyday. Meanwhile, Ethridge, who exhibited everywhere in the 2010s, saw his early work framed as an ironic commentary on advertising and editorial clichés. But soon it became difficult to distinguish between his artistic work and his advertising work. The 5th edition of Chanel Bracelet with Mackerel (2013) depicts a fish trapped in a luxurious bangle. It is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art and is an excerpt from an advertising campaign he shot.
You can complain that this mix of high-end advertising and contemporary art is selling out. As Jay Caspian Kang writes in an essay for The New Yorker: “We have largely abandoned the part of the ‘pitch’ critique that assumes that nothing truly interesting or innovative can ever be found on mass-market platforms. It is right to lament the fact that Still, I doubt that today’s art world is very “revolutionary” compared to the mass market. These days, protecting art for art’s sake can lead to becoming an elitist gatekeeper.
So, paradoxically, it can be argued that there is actually class politics at play when addressing audiences beyond galleries and museums. Because even if the audience can’t afford a luxury item, they probably enjoy fantasizing about it and are more likely to see a luxury item. I’d rather see yellow cabs or magazine ads than museums. You don’t have to pay any admission fees, and best of all, you don’t have to feel like you’re missing out on something just because you don’t have an art history degree (never mind that you might not get much out of it). please). . What’s more, advertising may actually have the power to influence the cultural imagination and change what we want: expressions, trends.
The music industry, which is less prone to elitism than the arts, grappled with this advertising problem in the 1980s. Proponents of collaboration argue that in order for musicians to survive economically, they are better able to adapt to changes in the media and that radical ideas can help them survive, as Tina Turner and David Bowie did in a 1987 Pepsi ad. He argued that it might be possible to penetrate the mainstream. It’s been 20 years and there are very few musicians making money off their actual music anymore. It’s all about touring, advertising, and sneaker collaborations. Is there a possibility that you will become a visual artist next?
In January, Cindy Sherman, who had long resisted commercial work, announced a campaign for Marc Jacobs. Like Weems, she incorporated her signature move of pretending to be someone else in front of the camera into Teller’s photographs. Sherman’s groundbreaking work in the late 1970s reacted to how the utopian counterculture had been commercialized by then, betraying a media environment in which everyone was both critic and consumer. It was formative for the Pictures Generation, a group of artists who created photographs. In a sense, creating an advertisement there proves Sherman’s own claims about photography. Unlike Weems, a sincere message will never replace a product. Instead, Marc Jacobs is just one of the outfits Sherman wears.
Debbie Harry in a Gucci ad photographed by Nan Goldin.
Photo Nan Goldin/Courtesy of Gucci
This fall’s Nan Goldin Gucci campaign features Blondie singer Debbie Harry in the back of a vintage car with a small dog and a luxury bag. Like Goldin’s iconic work from the 1980s, this is a portrait of an artsy New Yorker made for a night out downtown. But if you strip away the intimacy, the spontaneity, the lo-fi camera, the wit and the guts from Nan Goldin’s photography, what’s left? A very ordinary photo. Harry is perfectly lit, and the shot feels inhuman, like a still from the Hollywood remake of All About Beauty and Blood, the stunning 2022 documentary about Goldin’s life. is. This campaign proves that Goldin’s signature is indeed one that even she herself cannot imitate.
We should ask: Is fashion supporting art or subsuming art? A museum director recently told me that young patrons are investing in closets, making it harder to attract customers. Additionally, these days you can get works of art such as paintings, sculptures, and installations from runway shows.
But brands like Dior and Chanel seem to understand why complete collapse is not enough, sponsoring museum exhibitions, buying ads in art magazines, and hiring artists for collaborations. I’m doing it. They support the ecosystem that creates art, rather than swallowing it themselves and turning it into something else. Because without this ecosystem and its dialogue, not only would the quality of the art decline, but there would also be fewer opportunities to show off fancy costumes at galas.
What’s really worth protecting from a collapsing world of art and luxury isn’t exclusivity or art world insider baseball. It is a realm set for experimentation and risk, strangeness and futility, and art that can challenge, delight, and surprise.
