Ad is/n't Art

"An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you."


--from the 1997 essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace




I like this. It makes me feel queasy about my job whenever I read it. As a result, I delve more deeply into what makes me/my job different. This town of Bozeman, MT is my hometown. My advertising job at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle lets me see the people I grew up with, the business owners and citizens who showed me the thing we most want from each other is kindness. The connection I experience in community is much like the one I find in nature. I can enjoy Andy Warhol on Hebgen Mountain in much the same way that I can enjoy reading Edward Abbey on Bozeman's Main Street.


Advertising, from hieroglyphics to Google, certainly passes a message spawned from a core sociological response/reward archetype--a model of communication ego-driven and capitalistic to the core. However, it serves a need and a purpose in which cultures must work together in order to survive. Ain't that downright socialism?


With an overloaded regimen of some 5,000 ads every day, we react only when there is a commercial connection between the Consumer and its Control Machine. 


Surely, any MBA will tell you that such a connection must travel through at least one small instance of art!