I thought Lethem's argument in "The Ecstasy of Influence" was very convincing. I really only had one issue with it, which struck me on page 39, with his statement, "...even a really beautiful, ingenious, powerful ad (of which there are a lot) can never be any kind of art: an ad has no status as gift; i.e., it's never really for the person it's directed at." Hmm. After a urinal ended up in our art history books, I thought we'd be a little more careful about saying things like "[that] can never be any kind of art."
Advertisements are designed for an audience just as much (if not more) than a book or a painting is--so if the latter can be "for" a person, why not an ad? I understand what Lethem was saying about commodification, but just because most people see something as a commodity doesn't detract from the fact that one person may see it as art. If the person who designed the ad considers it to be art, does it not make it so? Or, if the ad "moves the heart," has it not become a work of art for the person who is viewing it? I guess I just think we should should be careful when it comes to inventing rules about what is or isn't art. Because as we know from history, once we start establishing rules, someone's just going to come along and mess them all up anyway.
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