AD ART - MUCH MORE THAN JUST AD ART

Doug Bales - London Free Press, November 1982

Any art-lover who unthinkingly sneers at commercial art ought to think again and go look at today's exhibition by the new Advertising Art Society of London It's on for only one day, in the King Street skyway connecting the two blocks of the City Centre Holiday Inn.  

What our hypothetical art snob would see there is not just ad illustrations but Art, pure and simple.    The notion that so-called fine art is somehow nobler because it's purer, because it's done without the ulterior motive of selling, you something, is hogwash.

Granted, most advertising art is propaganda. But so is Goya's anti-war masterpiece, The Shootings of May,3. So is Picasso's Guernica. So is Warhol's soup can.                 ,

The notion that commercial art prostitutes itself won't hold water as a reason for denying it gallery space alongside the non-commercial stuff.

Many of the artists represented in today's show (it opened Wednesday night, actually) work both in commercial and in non-commercial art: Klaas Verboom, Rudolf Bikkers and Clive Stevens are among them. CIiff Keams is there too, with an illustration that would be worthy of Howard Pyle.

It's a pity that the exhibition is on view for only one day, and in a place where the work can't be properly showcased. Next year's exhibition belongs in a proper gallery and should be kept around long enough to give more people a chance to appreciate it.