Popular Culture/Visual Culture Activity

Title:
Can an Advertisement Be Art?

Age:
Grades 1–8

Overview:
Participants gain an understanding of how the artists of the 1960’s used advertising in their work and their reasons for doing so. It could be used in the Walker Art Center galleries, Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, or in the classroom with a selection of images from Art Collector. The artworks included in the activity are only suggestions and instructors may choose different artworks to accompany the discussion questions.

Procedure:
Setting the Scene
What is an advertisement? Have you seen any ads today? Where? What were they for? (Show several ads, as well as photos  of works of Pop Art.)
Which do you think are artworks and which do you think are advertisements? What makes some of them artworks and others advertisements?
(Discuss whether an advertisement can be considered art.
Discuss who makes advertisements, such as advertising agencies, graphic designers, printers.)
What is the purpose of advertising?
What are the different forms of advertising?
What does an ad consist of?

Photographs, drawings, and illustrations by artists are often used in ads. (Discuss whether these images are considered works of art when used in an ad.)
How are words or writing used in advertisements? Do you ever see writing in a work of art?

Begin Looking
Go to an artwork such as Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Tomato Juice Box 1964.

Ask
What has this artist used as his subject? What shape is a real soup can or product box?
Did he make the product look like the real thing?
Is each can or box exactly the same? How are they the same? Why do you think they are the same?
(Discuss the idea of corporate identity; products look a certain way in order to familiarize consumers.)
Are there any differences? What are they?
(Using an actual Campbell’s soup can or product package, ask how the screen prints of the product differ from the real thing.)
Why do people making advertisements often make the product they are selling look much larger than in reality?
(Discuss how Warhol’s works differ from an advertisement.)
If you were using Warhol’s soup cans or boxes in an advertisement for the real thing, would you add anything? What?

Conclusion
The 1960s saw an advertising explosion because of the wealth in the United States at that time and the growth of consumerism. Artists are often influenced by the world around them, and some artwork of the 1960s reflects this increase in advertising. Many Pop artists also had backgrounds in commercial art and had worked in advertising agencies, or as window dressers for department stores.

Props
Can of Campbell’s soup
Image of product boxes
Image of additional Pop Art works

Follow-up Activities (for the classroom)
1. Choose a product in an advertisement and then use that product as a basis to design an artwork. What materials would you use? What size would you make your artwork?
2. Choose a product and design an advertising campaign.
3. Use Walker artworks to create an ad for the Walker Art Center. Entice the public discover all the Walker Art Center has to offer.

Tips
This activity would work well with a general tour of Pop Art, with an emphasis on the movement’s subject matter.