Advertisements' Influence on Art

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I live in West Halls on the University Park campus, so I often walk along Fraser Street. The other day when I was walking back to my room, I noticed some graffiti on one of the pedestrian crossing signs. A pair of wings had been added (after all, "Red Bull gives you wings."), as well as a little tiny Red Bull can in the person’s hand. Funny? Yeah. But creative? Not so much (okay, well, maybe in the sense that in was integrated into the sign). Graffiti can be used as a way of expression – it can be an art form. And the whole point of art is to express your emotions for your own benefit or to share your feelings with the world.

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            So doing graffiti without the goal of self-expression leaves you with what? Political or social commentary? Or perhaps we just live in a society where consumerism is so prevalent that it has infiltrated our forms of artistic mediums? For example, Andy Warhol’s silkscreen of Campbell soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles are a prime example of an extremely famous print with a product in them. Is the materialistic, capitalistic society going to completely take the individuality and creativity from art? We live in a society where we see thousands of advertisements everyday and are constantly pressed to buy, buy, buy. Products are even endorsed in television shows and movies. Films used to be considered works of art (and still sometimes are), and these too are now infiltrated by product placement. We all can recognize the rhetorical power of advertisements in that sense, but we never take into account this persuasive power can have on modern art.

 Is this the fate for art? Influence by products? I hope that creativity will always been able to overcome capitalistic ventures. Or perhaps we will see a new form of art emerge in advertisements and commercials. It is not uncommon for graphic designers and artists to work for large companies to produce eye-catching ads. In any case, advertisements exercise rhetorical power on far more than we initially realizing, influencing even forms of art.