Life, 1915-09-23 · page 9 of 48
Life — September 23, 1915 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes advertising's pretensions to artistry. The cartoon depicts a corpulent man in striped clothing reclining luxuriously among flowers—a parody of classical artistic poses. The accompanying text argues that while painters and writers guard their "secrets" and claim noble artistic pursuits, advertising copywriters are the true "geniuses" of their era, yet they conceal their work behind commercialism rather than claiming artistic credit. The satire's point: advertisers possess genuine creative talent but refuse to acknowledge it as "art" because advertising is purely commercial. The reclining figure mocks both the pretension of "fine artists" and the hypocrisy of ad-men who deny their own artistry while producing sophisticated persuasive work. The text concludes that real artistic integrity means acknowledging one's own product's merit regardless of public opinion.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ALTHOUGH the advertising con- vention recently held in Chicago was the biggest thing of its kind ever held—including numbers, nourishment and talk—it is to be doubted whether it will help the art of advertising. Painting and literature are arts— perhaps not so important to-day as ad- vertising—yet no masterpiece in oil or letters has been produced by con- ventions of painters or authors. It is doubtful whether Michael Angelo would have been a better artist if in his youth he had had the rare opportunity to attend conventions in Chicago. Gregariousness does not “LIFE: HEROES, The Great Art make art, which is nurtured in secret and is the product of personality, perseverance and plodding. We find the best advertising writers, therefore, to be men who carry their secrets hidden in their bosoms—men who conceal under commonplace, businesslike exteriors the fires of in- spiration. When they go among crowds the fires are banked, the shut- ters down; the sacred mystery en- shrined within is not for the common world. How rare all these advertising geniuses! The rank and file of “ad men” write their advertisements with a moral attached to cach one, the moral being to buy their product But this is not art. The real artist in advertising never concerns himself whether the public buys his product or not. His only object is to make himself interesting. EBATE: An argument or word battle of a formal nature, en- gaged in by two or more people, in which each tries to convince the other that he is wrong, but only succeeds in convincing himself more firmly that he is right. comicbooks.com