Oh Grand and Glorious Southern Guru, I am perplexed. What ails thee, my peabrained little grasshopper?
My sleep has been short, my walls have been climbed, my hair has been pulled.
I must know the difference between advertising and high art. Oh Great Creator, please give me the answer.
Stir no longer, little vacuous one. Art is in the eye of the beholder, and yes, advertising can be high art.
But Holiest of the Holy, whilst I acknowledge there is a role for subjectivity in the appreciation of art, and that art and advertising similarly use form, colour and symbol to convey messages, and that both can be aesthetically pleasing and accessible, and that both share the goal of changing behavior and attitudes, and that both often highlight the tension between reality and ideals and can shape aesthetic tastes, does not an adequate answer to my question depend upon a precise definition of the term art?
Are there not different degrees of creativity and originality? Are there not different types of art?
Surely Majestic One, advertising is not “high” art, but rather popular, propagandistic art?
Not so, little inchworm.
street signs