Lecture 2...Advertising, Publicity and Media

Summary Exercise

• At the start of the twentieth century, an attempt to create a new art from a variety of nineteenth sources was made.


• Art movements emerged as a response to social change, for example Expressionism and Futurism represents the European reception of the modern age.


• There were two responses to the modern age, one view was pessimistic, concentrating on life being controlled by machinery and freedom being an ideology of the past.


• Contrasting with that was a more positive response, for example, from Marinetti, an Italian poet who was a symbolist until he created a new way of responding to this modern age.


• Advances in travel were evident, as before steam-engines were invented, no one had travelled faster than a horse, but then people began flying and racing motor cars.


• There was a third response, relating to the effect on art from the modern world, the development in the time before WW1 was very gradual although in the years after the Great War this development became stronger and dominant.


• Although there was evidence of architecture and machinery, when the third response is taken into account, modernisation was not essentially technological, but social as well, which was shown by the relationships formed between people.


• Expressionism and Futurism were examples of positive and negative artistic responses, of the modern/urban age. However, Cubism was the complete opposite and didn’t take into account what existed beyond the studio.


• In summary, there were two opposites that artists tried to bring together, on one side was the art that decoded the modern world and on the other side was the response that art must renovate itself.

Harrison, C. and Wood, P (1997) 'Art in Theory: 1900-1990', Oxford, Blackwell p 125-129

Lecture 1... Modernity and Modernism

The purposes of these two images are the same, they are to persuade, but what the posters are persuading the audience to do are completely different. For example, the top image is an advert persuading people to buy the ‘Uncle Sam’s Range’ and the one underneath is persuading people to join the army.

The emotions that are evoked by looking at the poster are different, as with the Great War poster, it is supposed to bring about guilt to those not in the war, and a feeling of heroicness to those who fought and have stories to tell their children. This is carried out by the word YOU being underlined, as if the poster is directly aimed at the audience, which is a similar tactic used in today's advertising in adverts for charities, television adverts in particular, as these campaign’s repetitively use the word ‘you’ to personalise the message being communicated. Also the word Daddy, softens the tone and makes the message seem more childlike.
Whereas when you look at the Uncle Sam poster, it is supposed to make you want to buy the range, and buy into that lifestyle. This is also similar in today’s advertising when celebrities are used to advertise a particular lifestyle, for example using Thierry Henri, Tiger Woods and Roger Federer in Gillette adverts, this is a way of saying, ‘you could be as good looking as these people if you use this product’.

The classes of the protagonists in the images are very similar, as the man in the Great War image looks quite wealthy, and so do the children, the people in the Uncles Sam image look incredibly upper class due to their dress, their surroundings and the fact that they have a slave, featured in the bottom left hand corner of the image.
Judging by the man's expression in the image, he has not been to war, as he is Middle Class, and it was the working class who were enrolled to the army. So the target audience of this poster is aimed at the Middle Class with the aim to persuade them to enrol, this type of propaganda was common in the Great War. Forced conscription was not introduced until 1916, where every able man in the country was recruited to the army.

There are similarities in the way the messages are being communicated, the use of patriotism comes across, however, in the Uncle Sam image, this patriotism is much more obvious, for example, there are very strong references of the American flag featured throughout in the characters’ clothing, with the stripes and stars, which is the design of the wallpaper too. The messages of patriotism in the Great War poster are much more subtle, one reference is the pattern design on curtain, the roses, which are a symbol used to represent England, and secondly is the soldiers the young boy is playing with on the floor, they are not usual soldiers, they are the Queen’s guard.

The content of the type used in both posters are very different, in the Great War poster, the type is a question which is intended to sound like it is being asked by one of the children to the father, especially with the word, daddy. The type seems quite visually representative as it is a hand written style to personify it even more.