Artists, advertising, and the borders of art

In the first study of its kind, Michele H. Bogart explores in unprecedented detail the world of commercial art, its illustrators, publishers, art directors, photographers, and painters. She maps out the border between art and commerce and expands our picture of artistic culture and practice in the twentieth century with unexpected pairings of Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol, J.C. Leyendecker and Georgia O'Keeffe, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Pepsi-Cola, the avant garde and the Famous Artists Schools, Inc. From the turn of the century through the 1950s, the explosive growth of popular magazines and the national advertising that supported them offered artists new sources of income and new opportunities for reaching huge audiences. Bogart shows how this change in the marketplace forced a rethinking of the purpose of artistic practice. She examines how Howard Pyle, Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell, and other illustrators understood their identities. She looks at billboard production; at the growing schism between art posters and billboard advertisements; at the new roles of the art director; at the emergence of photography as the dominant advertising medium; and at the success of painters in producing fine art for advertising during the 1930s and 1940s.