Ad Artist

While studying abroad in Spain this summer, the department store equivalent of Macy’s here, El Corte Ingles was running an ad campaign based off Velazquez’s “Las Meninas”. After our discussion this week on high culture vs. pop culture, I started to think of this advertisement differently. The creators took a piece of high culture out of it’s context and brought it down to the Kitsch level. In doing so, the original work loses all of it’s original meaning and becomes saturated with dominant hegemonic values in order to sell an image of the department store as trendy. The young girls are replaced with twenty something fashionistas dressed in modern fashions, a cute young girl replaces the dwarfs, and a beautiful, blond male photographer with flowing hair replaces the painter himself (who is not quite so good looking). The convergence of cultures is present in this ad, as one needs an education to understand the true nature of the advertisement; however, it can still appeal to the masses.

The use of artists to make advertisements in past decade has become increasing popular to market coolness. Over the past century the status of artists transformed. No longer were artists crazy recluses, like Van Gogh or Goya, but members of an elite society the masses could not partake in. Through their status advertisers began to use artists to make their products appear cool and in. Artists sold their souls to pop culture, producing ad campaigns and then selling them as coffee table books. This leaves me to question when did art become about promoting the values of the man? When did it stop questioning, but conforming?