9/18/2006
Chesterton on the Art of Advertising
G. K. Chesterton offered these reflections on a pictorial advertisement where a bar of soap was inserted in a painting by Sir John Millais entitled “Bubbles”.
” But the improvement of advertisements is the degradation of the artists. It is their degradation for this clear and vital reason: that the artist will work, not only to please the rich, but only to increase their riches; shich is a considerable step lower. After all, it was as a human being that a pope took pleasure in a cartoon of Raphael or a prince took pleasure in a statuette of Cellini. The prince paid for the statuette; but he did not expect the statuette to pay him. It is my impression that no cake of soap can be found anywhere in the cartoons which the Pope ordered of Rafael … he [the artist] will be working to spread quack medicines, queer investments; and will work for Marconi instead of Medici.” (G. K. Chesterton, Utopia of Usurers)
In our own time, nothing reinforces this point so much as how classic rock and roll songs are used to sell cars, soft drinks, electronic gadgets, yogurt, and just about anything else a person might care to lay his hands on. Check out this list to get a whiff of the trend.
The creative spirit of rock was anti-establishment and anti-commercial in the extreme. Back in the ’60′s and ’70′s , a popular artist who “sold out” to commercial interests would have been strung up by his own guitar strings. But over the years, rock lost and commercialism won. The soap manufacturers bought out the musicians.
