Corporate art
A recently published book brings together advertising, literature, music, dance, cinema and much more
Advertising: science, technique, tool or art? It certainly expresses the culture of a particular period, as well as a corporate culture that evolves, changes, shifts depending on contemporary collective imagination, entrepreneurial feeling, that fleeting creative moment that makes every production organisation unique. Some see advertising as a science, others as an art, and it is the latter approach that informs Pubblicità è arte. L’undicesima musa (Advertising as art. The eleventh muse), a recently published book curated by Emanuele Gabardi, which looks at advertising as the outcome of a particular art, be it literature, music, dance or cinema. This is a book for readers who wish to take a look at this aspect of the corporate world from a different perspective, a book that, by the by, begins by drawing an innovative parallel between advertising and all other expressions of human activity.
Indeed, curator and authors are led by the classical muses, highlighting how Clio is part of the history of advertising, as well as how Calliope, Erato and Euterpe inspire its different forms – epic, sentimental and lyric – of poetry, individually or, at times, together. Calliope is also the muse of “beautiful voice” and, certainly, voices have to be pleasant in advertising, while Erato engenders the desire for what is being advertised, and Euterpe creates a pleasant association by making us smile. Further, the authors also look at Melpomene and Polyhymnia’s musical influence on advertising, at Thalia when narration acquires a comic tone, or at Terpsichore when the audience’s thoughts are made to dance. Not to mention Urania, the “heavenly one”, the muse of astronomy and geometry, which together with Clio inspires the creation of design objects conceived for public and private places, as well as the perspective for paintings and sculptures. Finally, the early 20th century saw the birth of cinema and, with it, of the tenth muse, with which advertising always had a special relationship since the very beginning.
Once concluded this fascinating story, Gabardi argues that advertising itself represents the eleventh muse and this is the concept that underlies the book, focused on the mutual and complementary relationships between advertising and history, literature, music, dance, cinema, art and design – a book that, as we learn in its first pages, had a “long gestation period”, but that is definitely worth a careful read.
Pubblicità è arte. L’undicesima Musa (Advertising as art. The eleventh muse)
Emanuele Gabardi (curated by)
Franco Angeli, 2022
A recently published book brings together advertising, literature, music, dance, cinema and much more
Advertising: science, technique, tool or art? It certainly expresses the culture of a particular period, as well as a corporate culture that evolves, changes, shifts depending on contemporary collective imagination, entrepreneurial feeling, that fleeting creative moment that makes every production organisation unique. Some see advertising as a science, others as an art, and it is the latter approach that informs Pubblicità è arte. L’undicesima musa (Advertising as art. The eleventh muse), a recently published book curated by Emanuele Gabardi, which looks at advertising as the outcome of a particular art, be it literature, music, dance or cinema. This is a book for readers who wish to take a look at this aspect of the corporate world from a different perspective, a book that, by the by, begins by drawing an innovative parallel between advertising and all other expressions of human activity.
Indeed, curator and authors are led by the classical muses, highlighting how Clio is part of the history of advertising, as well as how Calliope, Erato and Euterpe inspire its different forms – epic, sentimental and lyric – of poetry, individually or, at times, together. Calliope is also the muse of “beautiful voice” and, certainly, voices have to be pleasant in advertising, while Erato engenders the desire for what is being advertised, and Euterpe creates a pleasant association by making us smile. Further, the authors also look at Melpomene and Polyhymnia’s musical influence on advertising, at Thalia when narration acquires a comic tone, or at Terpsichore when the audience’s thoughts are made to dance. Not to mention Urania, the “heavenly one”, the muse of astronomy and geometry, which together with Clio inspires the creation of design objects conceived for public and private places, as well as the perspective for paintings and sculptures. Finally, the early 20th century saw the birth of cinema and, with it, of the tenth muse, with which advertising always had a special relationship since the very beginning.
Once concluded this fascinating story, Gabardi argues that advertising itself represents the eleventh muse and this is the concept that underlies the book, focused on the mutual and complementary relationships between advertising and history, literature, music, dance, cinema, art and design – a book that, as we learn in its first pages, had a “long gestation period”, but that is definitely worth a careful read.
Pubblicità è arte. L’undicesima Musa (Advertising as art. The eleventh muse)
Emanuele Gabardi (curated by)
Franco Angeli, 2022