Can something as commercial as advertising be considered art?

I say Michelangelo was an an adman. His famous ceiling is a massive corporate ad for the Roman Catholic Church. If they had film his storyboard would have been handed to a director. What’s really cool is that it’s made up of naked people. Imagine any corporation, let alone a church, letting you do that today. Their focus groups would kill it. The Italians were obsessed with the power of the nude. I reckon Michelangelo would have painted Mussolini floating naked amongst the saints if the despot was the client. Advertising plunders the arts because the arts figure out how to trigger emotion. We let the arts do that by trial and error. It’s risky stuff our sponsors aren’t prepared to do with their brands. So we let some poor bones-of-his arse artist or filmmaker do it. Then, When we see a chick hatch we skua in and snatch it. The trick for the clever artist is to do it within a corporation. But artists have a hole in their defensive shields which makes them interesting, but too touchy for client meetings.
I say every agency in Sydney should sponsor an artist. They only need a Mac. I don’t mean painters – that’s over people. The equivalent of the Sistine chapel today would be convincing thousands of sydney-siders to go naked on the Opera House steps. You look at the photos of that sea of pink bodies, not wearing any of our products or logos, and you start thinking about humanity, really thinking. it’s that old power of the nude thing again, re-invented.

“As an advertising guy, who is also a passionate supporter of the arts.” With respect, show me me a successful person in advertising who isn’t!

Advertising at its worst is similar to the arts.
Advertising at its best is more akin to a Skinner Box.

It’s damaging for advertising people to believe otherwise. It’s why some in the game get the bad name they do from their clients.

Great topic to discuss.

Isn’t the very definition of art that it must serve no other purpose?

Personally, I believe there’s more artistic integrity on walls at Cannes than you’ll find in any collection of Damien Hirst’s work.

In the Print/Poster exhibition at Cannes, the creators more often than not set out solely to make something wonderful, with commerciality not entering into the equation at all. Love jobs, scam work, hundreds of hours of unpaid labour… with no money changing hands. Sounds like ‘proper’ art to me.

Hirst, on the other hand, sets out to make a killing nearly every time he creates a piece. I guess he’s an artist, because he’s turned fleecing the rich and gullible into an art-form.

I guess you could argue that ulterior motives exist in the Cannes entries: awards. But find me an artist anywhere in the world (excluding people pottering around in their spare time) who don’t try and make a buck from their work?

It all comes back to your definition of art. If you believe that a Ferrari Dino is a work of art, then all bets are off really.

It will be a very interesting discussion… although, I got into design and advertising for the very reason that it wasn’t ‘art’, that each project has a purpose and ultimately a sales or business objective and that I wouldn’t be expected to express my own personal views… not that I don’t have them, I just liked the separation between design and art for that very reason.

This kind of discussion is always gonna come down to “your definition of art”.
Let me put a mouth guard in and have stab.

Art makes you feel something that non-art can’t.

For me the trick to understanding it -without all the intellectual crap- is to stand in front of the work but turn your attention inwards. Ask yourself how the work is making you feel. It might be just anger at the artists gal to call it art, but you feel something – which is the essential human experience. What’s the bet the first question you’ll be asked at the pearly gates is gonna be …”Well, what did you feel?” And after you’ve bored St Pete with the usual list of highs and lows he’s gonna say “Is that all?! You should’ve looked at some art you gronk!
The second question will of course be…”You ever work on cigarettes?..alcohol?..Harvey Norman?”

@Hmmm… I wonder if you’ve ever stood in front of, and walked around Damien Hirst’s
“The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” which is an astonishing, visceral work of art. The idea is incredible, although to you probably anyone could have thought of it. The title is pure artistic genius, especially as you look into the open mouth of the shark & think about what Hirst is saying.
I have experienced similar visceral reactions to ads, but mostly because they’re so brain-numbingly boring & stupid.
But then some ads have moved me to tears – especially the “father & son” Telecom NZ masterpiece, which to me is the best use of existing music I’ve ever seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGXGD_27z_o
So for me art is about an emotional response, and how those emotions are engaged & manipulated.
Peter Rush is spot on when he says that the Sistine Chapel is an ad for The Catholic Church.
So to me anyone who can engage & manipulate emotions to cause a response – whether that’s to give your soul to the church, or to give your cash to Harvey Norman, is a type of artist.
A lot of advertising creatives are bullshit artists, but artists none the less.
Banksy is right.

Hirst is an art-world hoax. Makes sense that that an ex-adman would defend him.

Hi Bob – Hirst is an art-world phenomenon. You may think he’s a hoax, but that doesn’t make him any less of an artist. Religion is a hoax. Research is a hoax. Politics is the art of the hoax.
FYI I’m not really an ex-adman – more of an ‘Occasional-Part-Time-Project-Whore-For Hire-in-Satan’s-Circus’, as long as you brief me across my bar, which is made from 150 year old oak doors from China, & where there’s Asahi & Sapporo on tap. I’m over the tedium of meetings.