The artists that are shaping our culture today can no longer be limited to the art gallery and the museum. Today’s artists are broadcasting their work all over the world on screens large and small. They are fluidly migrating back and forth from the art and commercial worlds. Brands like BMW, Adidas, Scion, Louis Vuitton have created clear points of view that they now own as movements. This comes as art has become mainstream and as consumers and the art establishment encourage mixing and matching. It’s fair to say that commercialism and new technologies have shaken up the art world. But this was not always so.
During most of the latter part of the twentieth century, figure art and craftmanship lost its perceived value as the art-buying elites took their acquisition cues from the prevalent mood among critics and artists such as Duchamp. “Traditional” artists, then, went into the more lucrative, less subjective worlds of commercial Art where an image needed to tell a clear story.
Norman Rockwell, Howard Pyle, Milton Glaser and other masters applied their trade to theaters, magazines, books and corporations in a way that was accessible to all. Companies like Coca-Cola led America’s golden era of illustration. And thus began business art or advertising.
As advertisers our biggest goal is making the strongest impact possible on behalf of a brand with millions of consumers. For this the must always be in touch with the roots of the masters. They must choose the right subject and style to get the right image across and maximize the possibilities; challenging, inspiring and entertaining our more demanding viewers.
Beyond this we must be smart. Our new medium is digital and interactive, granting artists for the first time the opportunity to get feedback and insights. This technology expands our story-telling opportunities, but we must remain relevant. The writing is on the wall, and the sky is the limit.
Our audiences will have little patience with clutter, and will play a valuable role crediting or discrediting products or services. They will continue to demand entertainment but they will be harder to entertain. They will continue to seek out more to aspire to and work that inspires them to more, and that’s just fine by us. It has always been the artist’s role to do this in society.