Some words on mountains

One indication that distance still looks our way is the brazen theft of ideas from international artists. The latest in a long line of nz exploiters is Dulux taking Ed Ruscha for a walk around the city. Here are a few other OTN posts featuring global artists being ‘homaged’ by ad agencies and designers:

Ruscha (again)
Cattelan
Rembrandt
Kruger

…and in the New Zealand division:

McCahon
Parekowhai (not really, but a big OTN favourite copycat)

Images: left Dulux advertisement and right Ed Ruscha Wall rockets

Skin in the game

There aren’t many major companies that don’t call on an artist from time to time to give their brands an upward spin. Nike has just called on Martino Gamper, a regular exhibitor in NZ with Francis Upritchard, and he's answered the call. Gamper used one of Nike's new high-tech knit materials to fit out some drum kits with Nike skins. Who knows what they sound like?(well Nike probably do) but they look sharp and Gamper has added his own touches to the drum sides. You can see more here.

Other art brand combos from OTN
Jeff Koons and Dom Pérignon
Ralph Hotere and Westpac
Damien Hirst and Alexander McQueen
Gilbert and George and Comme des Garçons
Cindy Sherman and MAC
Salvador Dali and Chupa Chups
Jenny Holtzer and Keds

Dick and Ches and Dale

An enduring Kiwi  tale is the one about Dick Frizzell inventing Ches. He's the little one in the Ches and Dale cheese promotion combo from the 1960s. Now, in a very entertaining essay in the book Promoting prosperity, Frizzell himself has announced that he was not Ches’s Daddy at all.

It turns out he just  “helped with the pencil ‘inbetweening” for the animation of the TV commercial. Hard to know who did the initial drawings although a Nobby Clark (really) is mentioned in some accounts. For Chesdale nuts, Robert Jenkins wrote the lyrics for the Ches and Dale jingle, Terry Gray the music and it was performed by Brian Borland and Gordon Hubbard of The Yeomen. More here on the excellent longwhitekid site.

Frizzell also begs off having created the Four Square man. As this character made his first appearance in the late fifties he wasn’t really a starter.

You can see the Ches and Dale animation here.

Mad about the boy

Weiner (creator and lead writer) said he recalled a Mad Men episode in which a group of employees sneaks into a partner’s office to get a closer look at his new Rothko painting. (“It’s like looking into something very deep,” says one ad man. “You could fall in.”) “There was some controversy in the writers’ room about the depth of that conversation,” Weiner said. Do people really have discussions like that, some writers asked? “They do in front of a Rothko,” Weiner replied.
As reported in the Art Newspaper

Art in Adland

Lotto's latest TV advert reaches out to Damien Hirst's diamond encrusted skull to sell a must-have moment to their punters.

The truth is out there

Now, thanks to Converse, you know

Art in Adland

A billboard in Basel uses Maurizio Cattelan's The Ninth Hour to push product 

Image: Bottom  The Ninth Hour by Maurizio Cattelan

Choc and awe

The Cadbury's people have never been shy about pointing their chocolaty finger art’s way. Our last Cadbury’s post had them making an ad where the denizens of chocolate land munched on the arm of the Venus de Milo and now, in their latest ad epic, they go the whole destructive hog and split a statue clean in half. 

What follows is definitely silly and involves purple-clothed people emerging from the statue's base, choppering in some playground gear and then inexplicably cutting to a Guggenheim Museum-style foyer to exhibit a giant mixing bowl. What’s it take to sell fine chocolate? Based on our survey of two: sacrificing art, that’s what. 

Images: Joyville the latest Cadbury’s advert. You can see it here.

One day at the advertising agency

Ad guy: … and so these robots which are actually Daleks - “exterminate, exterminate” - and they are huuuuge with robot arms that can fire out death and destruction only instead they will be firing out Jeff Koons' Balloon Puppies because it’s all about power and your power company and how Jeff Koons is one of the most powerful artists in the world and the Balloon Dog is one of his most powerful images so it’s a power, power combo. And that’s why the small little people are waving at the Dalek because they are so amazed to see these giant stainless steel puppies coming out of the Dalek arms instead of a hail of bullets or laser beams … Power.

Client: Whatever.

Image: Poster for Powershop.co.nz

MacSherman

In August we mentioned how photographer Cindy Sherman was working with big fashion brands. Here she is stepping out with M.A.C in Tokyo's über fashionable Omotesando district.

David in adland: volume 2

Just so your Saturday morning isn't completely wasted here's the second part of our look at David doing it for the ad guys.

Click on the image to read the fine print

Stand ‘n deliver

We’ve talked before about how Neil Dawson has given Wellington on of its enduring icons. But now there is a challenge from Christchurch’s Dawson in the square Chalice. Here it is standing in for the city on a television advertisement for Pack ‘n Save.

Heart of stone

Yet another example of the ongoing project advertising agencies have set themselves: to convince us that cars are created by artists and not industrial designers. Last year it was Hyundai claiming that its design philosophy was one of 'fluidic sculpture' (you can stop laughing now).

This time it’s Honda’s turn with a Jennifer Beals wannabe making out with a chisel like Michelangelo’s right there chanting, “Every block of stone has a car inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”

At least is better than their infamous advert Cog. That was the one where they lifted Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s brilliant 1987 video The Way Things Go without so much as a credit. Fischli and Weiss threatened legal action. You can judge for yourself on that one. Watch The way things go here and Cog here.

Rene Magritte (Not)

Rene Magritte's famous pipe image at work in the advertising industry.

The iron fist in the bloody glove

One day at the advertising agency

Ad guy 1: See we have a campaign coming up for this art museum

Ad guy 2: I hate art museums, they feel so completely alien to me

Ad guy 1: Did you ever see that movie?

Image: Advert created for the Tamayo Art Museum in Mexico City. Agency Draftfcb México, creative Yuri Alvarado, Luis Pedro González and Gustavo González, copy Ezra Mochón.

David in Adland: Volume 1

When a replica of Michelangelo’s David toured stores in New Zealand, it was fig-leafed up to save local shoppers from getting over-excited at the opportunity to compare the diminutive Italian model with the distinctively larger sized penises they were familiar with in New Zealand, or something like that. We’ve already had a few posts on David’s excursions into the world of advertising, but here for your viewing pleasure is a round-up of the latest efforts.
Click on images to enlarge

When in Rome

The latest Mini ad is set in Rome, culture capital of Italy. You know this must be true because every corner the little red minis turn into is blocked by guys moving a large ‘marble’ sculpture. Hard to tell what the amorphous (most likely paper mache) figure is based on but it looks a bit like M’s David doing a half squat, there’s definitely a feeling that a chair would be appreciated.

Owning a car that can manoeuvrer round a statue, you know you need one.

Wool gathering

When you are putting artists together with product, Gilbert & George (as bizarre as it seems at first) was an ok-that-makes-sense combo with Comme des Garcons, but the very funny David Shrigley teamed up with Pringle of Scotland? C’mon, these are the cardi stroke twin-set people who make the jerseys with diamonds on the front… oh, right … now we get it.

Maxed out

If the guys (it had to be guys) who made the TV ad for the Audi A8 hadn’t seen Max Gimblett in action, they were sure channelling his spirit in their latest epic. The promo line for the A8 campaign is "The art of progress" and features an ‘artist’ creating a huge ink drawing of the highly expressive kind. After all what else would you choose to represent the art of progress if not the ancient Eastern art of ink drawing? You can see the Audi ad here.

Copycat

Given the highly graphic nature of his work, the American artist Ed Ruscha has somehow kept his distance from the advertising world. We remember there was a towel design back a while and he did design the original format for Art Forum adverts but if you can keep a good artist out of the ad biz, you can't keep the ad biz away from a good artist. Take the banner billboard for Salt, AJ’s latest action pic. It is a clear copycat of Ruscha’s signature style. Odd that a movie set in Washington and New York reaches for the quintessential Californian desert artist. That’s not city smog you see there, no it's the endless stretch of the desert.