A brand new on-line present traces the early enterprise practices of main artists
The exhibition is hosted by London's Omer Tiroche Gallery and includes work by Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Sol LeWitt, René Magritte and James Rosenquist, all of whom have entered the business world.
The exhibition contextualizes the boom in advertising in the 1920s alongside the birth of surrealism and is intended to show how commercial and visual art movements overlap – as in the practice of the surrealist artist René Magritte, who worked as a graphic designer from the mid-1920s and later founded he founded his own advertising agency Studio Dongo together with his brother.
As advertising hit its golden age in the 1960s, the pop art movement also made its appearance – and it wouldn't be an art and advertising exhibition without a nod to Andy Warhol, who started his career as a commercial illustrator and consumed consumerism the US questioned his art. Warhol's cheeky canvas prints with dollar signs featured on the show.
The Power of Advertising also features works by two other artists associated with the pop art movement: James Rosenquist, who painted billboards as a teenager, and Ed Ruscha, who studied writing, design, and advertising and before his Joining a drawing painter and typesetter, an advertising agency worked as a layouter.
Also featured are artwork by Sol LeWitt, who early in his career did paste-ups and illustration for Seventeen Magazine before focusing on his art practice that made him a key figure in conceptual art and minimalism.
While the visual arts influence on advertising is well documented, the flip side of that relationship – how advertising shaped artists' art practices – is less widely recognized, and while the show is small, it clearly shows how the two are symbiotic in many ways .
The power of advertising can be viewed online until September 3rd. galleriesnow.net