Commercialization and aesthetics.

It struck me as I first saw Piccadilly Circus. It had struck me before, but it really struck me as I saw Piccadilly Circus. It wasn’t just the massiveness of the commercials in themselves that struck me, the exposure space or the fact that as an epileptic I felt vulnerable. What struck me was the power of the aesthetics. These advertisements were masterpieces in their own right, genius in a sense, almost perfect. Their aesthetic value is immeasurable – and without considering them beyond this one could almost call them art – yet that is exactly what they aren’t. Art must, in one sense or another be autonomous. Now, that is not to say that art exists in a vacuum. Art is dependent on a social, political and inter-textual (visual is perhaps better?) context. This however is not the essence of art, it is rather where art finds itself. Art is a form of communication where there is no clear definition – no conclusion that is given from the beginning. That is to say that there must be some form of interpretive space, some mystification, some form of dialogue. Art is hard to define, but if one agrees that at least one or two of the definitions listed above happen to be true, then one must agree that commercials cannot be art – no matter how aesthetically impressive they are.
The interpretive space in advertisements is closed, sealed – the message: BUY! Buy this product! There might be more to it than that, the advertisement in question might support a certain value, or a state of being, yet this can never be the point, it too is a path to the one and only interpretation which is the above stated. Following this there is no room for mystification – the observer cannot demystify the commercial. There is no dialogue – only a monologue, a monosyllable monologue. An aesthetic tour de force and a brand name, a logo – end.
I would further argue that for a creator of advertisements to be pretending to be creating art is immoral. For being an artist must, in all definitions, demand a maximum amount of freedom. If limitations are set on the form of expression, the message that can be conveyed or on the artist itself, then the would be artist has given in to a pressure that would reduce him from an artist to a highly skilled aesthetically minded hired labourer. Nohting wrong in that, just not art. To quote Albert Camus: "Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others." The maker of a commercial has no expression – for he has no freedom to express. His job, for we must not pretend otherwise, is to make a product appear as sellable as possible. If his personal form of expression gets in the way of that, then the expression and not the product must suffer. That’s to say that the commercial can never be greater than the product in itself, it exists in a simple master and servant relationship where the advertisement has no real existence, no autonomous area, is in fact nothing without the product it represents. It is not it’s own idea, but rather a masterpiece in terms of being the conveyer of another idea.
In many ways commercials are for the capitalistic society what social realist “art” was for the Soviet state. Were they artists? Their job was to aesthetically portray a worldview, or ideology if you will, if by failing to do this they were rejected as “artists”. The same for advertisements. If the ad, however aesthetic it might be in itself, fails to sell a product, it itself is a failure. In fact a commercial film would be considered a failure if the sales didn’t increase, even if the very film itself won a palme d’or. In other words a commercial can be judged as an object in aesthetic terms, but not in artistic terms. Since the goal of the commercial is so set, the only “freedom” the maker has is on an aesthetical level. This, as Piccadilly Circus will demonstrate, is often done with great success, however they can never be appreciated beyond that, in an artistic sense.