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• Students will explore the connections between art and advertising. • Students will undertake a critical understanding of the rights and responsibilities of advertising in the public realm. • Students will explore the differences between participation in and critique of mass media. • Students will articulate their own opinions and ideas about advertising and public mass media.
Art:21 Web Site Art:21 Web site • Advertising and Art – Michael Ray Charles • Opening Segment for Art:21 and biography – Barbara Kruger • Erasure and “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” – Paul Pfeiffer • Influences – Margaret Kilgallen Additional Web Sites • http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/eaa/ The Emergence of Advertising in America 1850-1920 • http://advertising.harpweek.com/ Harper’s Weekly 19th Century Advertising • http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/ Ad Access, a database of historical ads in television, radio and print • http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu:80/dynaweb/adaccess/beauty/ Beauty Begins with the Skin advertisement, 1929 • http://www.benetton.com/html/whatwesay/campaigns/photogallery.html Benetton photogallery of ad campaigns • http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/9747/kruger.html Barbara Kruger • http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/1aa/1aa667.htm Barbara Kruger at the Whitney Museum of Art • http://www.broadartfoundation.org/collection/kruger.html Barbara Kruger at the Broad Art Foundation
• What are the intersections between art and advertising? • Where do art and advertising diverge? • What are the responsibilities of advertisers to their clients? • What are the responsibilities of advertisers to the public? • How has advertising changed over the last 100 years? • How have public tastes, standards and expectations of mass media changed over the last 100 years? • How do artists participate in and critique mass media systems?
Early Advertising Have students research pre-modern advertisements both in print and on television. Select several images from Harper’s Weekly and Ad Access online archives and ask students to compare these visual and textual images with comparable examples of those they see today. Ask students to compare how these images have changed and what has stayed consistent. What are the differences in the media used, the products being represented, and the graphic design of the imagery? Look at the 1929 advertisement for skin products, Beauty Begins with the Skin, and compare it with a current soap or cosmetics advertisement for women. Ask students to write individually and discuss as a group what advertisers have learned over the past 100 years and how advertisements reflect changes in social taste, standards, and expectations? (Time: One 45 minute session) Pfeiffer’s Fiefdom Paul Pfeiffer is the definitive mediator of media. Pfeiffer’s interest in sports and popular media is merged with a fascination and exploration of new technologies-the digital and electronic media that make these images possible. Pfeiffer’s use of media as raw material for his work is profound. He systematically poaches and then translates images from popular culture creating newly formatted and poignant mediated moments. Pfeiffer says, “We have a great power today to make images that are truly spectacular and to achieve a kind of perfection, and there is something terrifying to me about it as well because maybe these images become so perfect that you forget everything else. So in a way there is a shrinking of the imagination.” Ask students to find current advertisements on television or in print that reflect Pfeiffer’s concerns about advertising. Have students look at Pfeiffer’s video works in the Art:21 Season Two segment and compare his artwork with his concerns about media. What are the ways that Pfeiffer is critiquing media in his work and how is he participating in it? If Pfeiffer had lived 20, 40 or 100 years ago, how would his work be different in terms of content, form, and media? (Time: One 45 minute session) The Stanley Cup as Holy Grail In his work Caryatid, Pfeiffer collected footage of Stanley Cup winners and digitally erased the figures holding the cup, creating a montage of the famous trophy eerily floating in the packed stadium. Initiate a contest where students use Internet searches to collect as many victory symbols such as trophies, tiaras, and belts. Extra points for downloaded images of winners kissing their victory items! (Time: after school) Michael Ray Charles – Choosing Sides The artist Michael Ray Charles investigates racial stereotypes drawn from the history of American advertising, product packaging, billboards, radio jingles, and television commercials. Charles draws comparisons between Sambo, Mammy, and minstrel images of an earlier era and those of contemporary mass media portrayals of black youths, celebrities, and athletes—images he sees as a constant in the American subconscious. Controversial images such as (Liberty Bros. Permanent Daily Circus) Blue Period use the format of the circus poster to comment on stereotypes of African Americans as entertainers and convicts. Have students view Charles’ paintings and ask them to make comparisons with the early advertising they saw in the previous exercise. What are the ways that Charles is both participating and critiquing the images he is inspired by – including the racial stereotypes perpetuated in advertising as well as the medium that advertising takes? View Charles’ Art:21 Season One segment and discuss his comment, “I think there is a fine line between perpetuating something and questioning something. I like to get as close to it as possible in order, I guess, to create that tension, to evoke thought and to have people question how they deal with these images.” Have students choose a contemporary advertisement that includes a stereotypical or controversial image. Have students engage in a formal debate about the positive and negative aspects of the ad, then redesign the ad to reflect their sensitivity to the portrayed or controversial image. (Time: Three 45 minute sessions) Margaret Kilgallen and the Handmade The installation and grafitti artist Margaret Kilgallen says, “I think when I explained graffiti to my parents, I compared it to the barrage of images we see every day, especially advertising, and how on billboards or corner stores or anywhere - it's absolutely everywhere, and yet it doesn't bother anybody. We completely block it out as if we don't see it, but for some reason we don't think of it as garbage. And instead maybe we look at graffiti, or the public looks at graffiti, and sees garbage and ugliness, and I always wonder why they don't look at the billboards, especially around San Francisco. There's millions of (them), like the new thing is dot.coms everywhere. Like, why isn't that garbage? That's like mind garbage. It's like commercials on T.V., and yet nobody ever questions that. That is so a part of their view of the world every single day.” “I like things that are handmade, and I like to see people's hand in the world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is. And in my own work, I do everything by hand. I don't project or use anything [mechanical], because even though I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work and my hand, my hand will always be imperfect because it's human. And I think it's the part that's off that's interesting.” Have students discuss these quotes and the difference between the handmade and the mass produced, specifically in advertising. How do the differences in these styles affect the image’s message? Ask students to find examples of the handmade in advertising. Have students create an advertisement for a new or existing product. After deciding on the important elements of their ad campaign (important aspects of the product to emphasize, tone, symbolism, etc.), ask students to render one version of their ad by hand, using colored pencil, pen, or paint, and the other version on a computer using found images, photographs and typed text. Have students compare and contrast the tone and quality of the advertisements in relation to their original conception of the ad. (Time: Three 45 minute sessions) Barbara Kruger Sends a Message Originally trained as a graphic designer, the artist Barbara Kruger began making art after working at magazines like House and Garden, Mademoiselle, and Aperture. Layering found photographs with text, Kruger creates images where the viewer becomes implicated in the struggle for power and control that her text and the practice of advertising refer to. Much of her text questions feminism, classicism, consumerism, and individual autonomy and desire, although her black-and-white images are culled from the mainstream magazines that sell the very ideas she is disputing. In several cases, Kruger’s images have become well-known enough for advertisers appropriate her graphic style and confrontational tone. Kruger also licenses her work to be printed on bags, umbrellas and coffee mugs. View several of Kruger’s works on the Internet and engage students in a discussion about how Kruger’s art intersects with advertising. Discuss the use of text as the principal element for conveying messages in art and advertising , citing specific examples from Kruger’s work and current print ads. Have students select a single word and collect as many different examples of it as possible from different publications. With your students discuss how the message changes according to the way the word appears and is used. (Time: Two 45 minute sessions) The Rights of the Public Advertising intersects with civic responsibility. There have been many cases where debate has erupted from a controversial advertisement. After viewing a range of images by artists who are influenced by media and advertising and exploring how advertising and media imagery has changed over the course of the last century, engage your students in a discussion about the responsibilities of advertisers to the public and the issue of visual pollution. As citizens, have your students ever experienced a conflict between rights and duties? Discuss the boundaries between the rights and responsibilities of individual citizens and the rights and responsibilities of business interests. Have students create a declaration of rights for each of these interests and hold a debate where students will present their declaration and defend the rights and responsibilities of their constituency. (Time: Four to five 45 minute sessions)
• Have students articulated an understanding of the relationships between art and advertising? • Have students articulated their ideas about the rights and responsibilities of advertising in the public realm? • Have students articulated their ideas about the differences between participation in and critique of mass media? • Have students articulated particular opinions and ideas about advertising and public mass media through the ads they created and debates they participated in? Find out how this lesson plan correlates to your state's education standards! On PBS TeacherSource do a search for "Art in the 21st Century" and click on the Standards Match icon.
This lesson could be extended to create a longer unit of study about visual literacy and media critique with the following lessons: Cartoon Commentary War on Film The Face of Fame Yearbook Tribes and Nomads Did you use this lesson or generate your own activities based on ideas inspired by the lesson? Submit student art work, new lesson plans, and your comments to Art:21 and have them posted on the site. Help the Online Lesson Library grow!
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