The Art of Advertising
Exhibition: In Berlin, the convergence of commercial and artistic communication is being contextualized historically. It is a commonplace that advertising has influenced modern art.
Exhibition In Berlin, the convergence of commercial and artistic communication is historicized It is a commonplace that advertising has influenced modern art.exhibition In Berlin, the convergence of commercial and artistic communication is historicized.
It is a commonplace that advertising has influenced modern art. Artists have long since descended from their mounds of muses, are involved in the everyday circulation of values and use advertising strategies for their own work. But conversely, do posters and advertisements also become art when they are made by artists?
The German Historical Museum in Berlin suggests this with the title of its current exhibition alone: "Strategies of Advertising Art from 1850 - 1933". It also suggests that the liaison between business sense and playfulness, which began in 1848 under the sign of freedom of the press, somehow came to an end in 1933.
The designer Peter Behrens saw his campaigns for AEG as part of a total work of art; the Deutscher Werkbund presented its posters, packaging and shop window decorations in 1913 with products and factories in the yearbook "Die Kunst in Industrie und Handel". But not everyone thought this way. René Magritte, for example, regarded his excursions into the world of advertising as talent-killing wage labor.
An old conflict of objectives
Hans Ottomeyer, who presented a similar exhibition at the Munich Stadtmuseum in 1996, writes in the catalog: "Making good advertising is an art." The Berlin museum director sees false morals at work when the commodity character of art and the artistic value of advertising as a commodity are negated. Well then, cultural criticism of advertising is as old as advertising itself. But doesn't art always mean something beyond monetary value, while advertising only creates this value by proxy? Moreover, good communication craftsmanship does not say much about its intellectual or ideological aspirations.
Historical course
In fact, professional ignorance was widespread at the time. This led many industry giants to simply carry on - with political propaganda - despite the extensive ban on advertising in 1933. However, the exhibition does not even hint at personal continuities into the post-war period, but acts as if dictatorship, wartime economy and consumption were mutually exclusive per se. Instead, curator Jörg Meissner stages a cultural and everyday history tour that traces familiar products in the mirror of their branding. And it does so with a wealth of exhibits. The special collections of 600 objects represent only a small selection. Of the 80,000 posters in the collection, almost a third were used for product and brand advertising.
Whether Odol, Maggi or Kaffee Hag - it's like being with good old friends: You know their stories and are touched by the reunion. For example, when an enamel sign from the preserving jar company Weck promises "The guarantee of unrivaled quality". Or when a match in an advertising film from 1928 falls in love with his Muratti cigarette. Perhaps the German brand association, the main sponsor of the show, will ask itself what feelings today's advertising material will trigger in 100 years' time.
Things get really exciting as soon as the colorful little pictures collide with big politics. In 1915, for example, nationally-minded advertising people launched a "Germanization card for commercial advertising". It replicated what had already been announced with the renaming of popular cigarette brands. Manoli's "Dandy" brand had become "Dalli" at the beginning of the First World War, and Garbáty had already renamed his "Duke of York" "Count Yorck von Wartenburg" in 1913. Even if the path led directly from the Magic Mountain to the trenches back then, everything remained the same in terms of packaging.
Strategies of Advertising Art 1850 - 1933The exhibition in the Pei Hall of the German Historical Museum in Berlin is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. until August 29. The accompanying 368-page catalog costs 25 euros and includes exclusive images and ten top-class essays as well as short biographies of the representatives of advertising art and commodity aesthetics of the time. (oc)
On a collision course: art, commerce and ideology.
Oliver Classen
It is a commonplace that advertising has influenced modern art. Artists have long since descended from their mounds of muses, are involved in the everyday circulation of values and use advertising strategies for their own work. But conversely, do posters and advertisements also become art when they are made by artists?
The German Historical Museum in Berlin suggests this with the title of its current exhibition alone: "Strategies of Advertising Art from 1850 - 1933". It also suggests that the liaison between business sense and playfulness, which began in 1848 under the sign of freedom of the press, somehow came to an end in 1933.
The designer Peter Behrens saw his campaigns for AEG as part of a total work of art; the Deutscher Werkbund presented its posters, packaging and shop window decorations in 1913 with products and factories in the yearbook "Die Kunst in Industrie und Handel". But not everyone thought this way. René Magritte, for example, regarded his excursions into the world of advertising as talent-killing wage labor.
An old conflict of objectives
Hans Ottomeyer, who presented a similar exhibition at the Munich Stadtmuseum in 1996, writes in the catalog: "Making good advertising is an art." The Berlin museum director sees false morals at work when the commodity character of art and the artistic value of advertising as a commodity are negated. Well then, cultural criticism of advertising is as old as advertising itself. But doesn't art always mean something beyond monetary value, while advertising only creates this value by proxy? Moreover, good communication craftsmanship does not say much about its intellectual or ideological aspirations.
Historical course
In fact, professional ignorance was widespread at the time. This led many industry giants to simply carry on - with political propaganda - despite the extensive ban on advertising in 1933. However, the exhibition does not even hint at personal continuities into the post-war period, but acts as if dictatorship, wartime economy and consumption were mutually exclusive per se. Instead, curator Jörg Meissner stages a cultural and everyday history tour that traces familiar products in the mirror of their branding. And it does so with a wealth of exhibits. The special collections of 600 objects represent only a small selection. Of the 80,000 posters in the collection, almost a third were used for product and brand advertising.
Whether Odol, Maggi or Kaffee Hag - it's like being with good old friends: You know their stories and are touched by the reunion. For example, when an enamel sign from the preserving jar company Weck promises "The guarantee of unrivaled quality". Or when a match in an advertising film from 1928 falls in love with his Muratti cigarette. Perhaps the German brand association, the main sponsor of the show, will ask itself what feelings today's advertising material will trigger in 100 years' time.
Things get really exciting as soon as the colorful little pictures collide with big politics. In 1915, for example, nationally-minded advertising people launched a "Germanization card for commercial advertising". It replicated what had already been announced with the renaming of popular cigarette brands. Manoli's "Dandy" brand had become "Dalli" at the beginning of the First World War, and Garbáty had already renamed his "Duke of York" "Count Yorck von Wartenburg" in 1913. Even if the path led directly from the Magic Mountain to the trenches back then, everything remained the same in terms of packaging.
Strategies of Advertising Art 1850 - 1933The exhibition in the Pei Hall of the German Historical Museum in Berlin is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. until August 29. The accompanying 368-page catalog costs 25 euros and includes exclusive images and ten top-class essays as well as short biographies of the representatives of advertising art and commodity aesthetics of the time. (oc)
On a collision course: art, commerce and ideology.
Oliver Classen
