Angela M. Brown
Fine Art and the Rise of American Consumer Culture
Life in the United States of America underwent a period of extensive change during the
decades following the Civil War. Technological developments in the areas of mass production,
transportation, and communication established shared standards of life across the nation. A
fortunate few exploited this progress to achieve great wealth, leading to an elite class of
Americans rapacious for the trappings and respectability of European aristocracy.
Industrialization led to urbanization, affecting a profound change on the daily existence of
working- and middle-class citizens. Each class emulated the one above it as it worked hard to
acquire the goods and services that signified that higher standard of living. Mass-produced
wares spread across the country, each competing for the attention of the American pocketbook.
Filling popular publications and covering public spaces, advertisements extolled the merits of
products ranging from ladies' corsets to farm equipment. Items that conveyed an aura of
continuity and virtue held great appeal; objects of art, in particular, became attractive to an everincreasing range of citizenry. The appropriation of fine art imagery that accompanied the rise of
American consumer culture impacted advertising, artists, and art itself during the period from the
end of the Civil War through the 1920's.
Magazine and newspaper advertising existed even in Colonial America. These
commercial messages, confined to a specific section of each publication, provided simple
information about a product's availability and features (Strasser 90). In the years following the
Civil War, industrial printing processes and the railroad brought magazines to a nationwide
audience. This new national media provided an ideal vehicle to deliver product advertisements
to a wide audience (Twitchell 72-73). Ads were no longer confined to a separate section of the
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magazine, they "grew in size, and their use of white space embraced new design principles"
(Strasser 90). The change in location and format, combined with the use of eye-catching
artwork, transformed the very nature of advertising. No longer were these messages comprised
only of information. Now, advertising's primary purpose was "to influence buyers by any means
possible" (Strasser 91). Trade cards, posters, and billboards were among the other forms of
media used by advertisers.
From the birth of the nation, images traditionally associated with fine art provided
material for print advertisers. Early Italian Renaissance style cherubs appeared in ads from the
earliest of America's publications (Hornung 44-45). These cherubs, who often graced the home
decorations of Europe's elite, conveyed a sense of taste combined with a wholesome abundance
that appealed to up-and-coming Americans. Classical Greece and Rome provided inspiration for
the nation's founding fathers beyond the formation of a new government. Public buildings and
commissioned art, elements that helped contribute to a national identity for the new country,
frequently alluded to a classical heritage. Early advertisements catered to this American fixation;
images of women draped in classic white robes conveyed the ideals of freedom, liberty, and
fertility that the citizens held dear (Hornung 70-74).
Traditional Western fine art continued to provide a source of images as new forms of
national media allowed advertising messages to reach a wider audience. During this same period
in the late nineteenth-century, America's emerging middle-class enjoyed an unprecedented
upward mobility. Anything associated with European art and culture appealed to these solid
citizens, who aspired to achieve an ever-higher standard of living. A comfortable - even elegant
- home was their prominent badge of success and virtue. Women became responsible for
creating this domestic sanctuary by filling their homes with items that had been imbued with
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value through their association with high art. If it was associated with culture and refinement,
whether it was a knickknack, a beauty cream, or a garden tool, it became a desirable commodity
(Ewen 125-127). By using fine art in their commercial messages, advertisers took deliberate
advantage of this situation. Even ads for the most mundane of products exploited the bourgeois
desire for upper-class sophistication; one 1987 Quaker Oats advertisement used an illustration of
the fertility goddess Ceres, complete with flowing robes and exposed bosom, to tout the grain as
her "choicest treasure" (Figure 1).
The economic and social changes that swept the country after the end of the Civil War
had a significant effect on artists. Mass-produced merchandise demanded creative treatment in
order to differentiate it from similar products. In order to stand out in a market littered with
competitor's goods, corporations required unique packaging, appealing product design, and
memorable advertisements. As producer and publisher requirements for branding and
advertising content multiplied, the demand for skilled illustrators grew. Willing artists now had
an opportunity for secure and steady employment. Willing, that is, "to abandon romantic
pretensions to autonomy and adjust their aspirations to the needs of the organization" (Lears
270). Historically, artists had obtained their livelihood through the patronage of wealthy,
socially-prominent people from the church or the aristocracy. By the end of the nineteenth
century, this system had become obsolete (Walker 7). The rise of commercial art provided a new
paying market for artistic talent. Many artists found that compromising their artistic freedom
was acceptable when accompanied by a weekly paycheck.
Some practical artists took advantage of this new opportunity to obtain exposure for their
work. Others were able to move between the worlds of commercial and fine art, enjoying the
security of regular employment while continuing to pursue their own creative endeavors.
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Normal Rockwell was one such individual. His illustrations helped promote a number of
household products, including a 1917 space heater (Figure 2). His assignment with the Saturday
Evening Post began in 1916; by the mid-twenties, his cozy style of art had brought him national
recognition. The smiling, stolid family scenes that he created charmed Americans, who had
become weary from the devastation of war and constant change. Rockwell's images looked back
to a simpler, more virtuous time (Hughes 508-509). If the "good old days" depicted in his works
never actually existed, his audience liked to believe that they did. The exposure he obtained
from his commercial work served him well. Rockwell went on to obtain icon status in American
visual arts, "familiar to nearly everyone in the United States, rich or poor, black or white,
illiterate or Ph.D." (Hughes 508).
Other fine artists, however, took umbrage at the advertising industry's appropriation of
their work. One notable clash of lofty artistic ideals with commercial exploitation came when
Procter & Gamble (P&G) "borrowed" the 1880 work of Thomas Anshutz for a soap
advertisement. Anshutz's The Ironworker's Noontime (Figure 3) was a groundbreaking work of
its time, a perfect blend of the "realism and ennoblement that late-nineteenth-century Americans
sought in art" (Lears 270). The work came to the attention of Harvey Proctor through a
reproduction in Harper's magazine. Proctor perceived that the modern image of men at work
was "an embodiment of that healthy manliness" that would appeal to P&G's target audience
(Lears 271). A cleaned-up version of The Ironworker's Noontime appeared as an Ivory soap ad
in 1883 (Figure 4). The artist was "outraged", both for the fact that the reference to his original
work was not acknowledged, and for "the subordination of his noble aims to commercial
purposes" (Lears 271).
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Soap advertising was the context of another significant collision between late-nineteenthcentury art and commerce. Sir John E. Millais was a prominent Pre-Raphaelite artist known not
only for his paintings but also for his drawings and book illustrations. His 1886 painting
featuring his grandson blowing bubbles from a pipe was "warmly received" by the art world
(Twitchell 185). A magazine purchased Bubbles as part of a "circulation-building endeavor of
covering its pages with images suitable for framing" (Twitchell 185). The painting's sweet
innocence was of great appeal to the middle-class of the era. The magazine publisher in turn
sold the painting to Pears' Soap Company (Twitchell 185). A slightly-modified version of
Bubbles, embellished with appropriate advertising copy, was used to promote Pears' Soap
(Figure 6). The image of the chubby-cheeked child became so associated with Pears' brand that
it was referenced in their ads through World War II (Figure 7). Like Anshutz, Millais found this
mercenary corruption of his popular work to be reprehensible.
A few artists achieved such respectability and name recognition that they were featured
in advertisements in order to promote relevant products. Panoramic paintings of the wild and
scenic West brought Thomas Moran to the attention of a popular audience. His vibrant
renditions of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon stimulated interest in Western tourism and
supported the creation of Yellowstone as the first National Park in 1872 (Hughes 199-200). The
Sante Fe Railroad, in the business of transporting citizens to the very locales that Moran made
popular, commissioned him to create a painting of the Grand Canyon that they could use for
marketing and promotion. The business association between Moran and Sante Fe proved
mutually beneficial. By 1909, the artist had become "so closely identified with the canyon that
the railroad used his picture in advertisements" (http://www.nga.gov/feature/moran/
final20.html) (Figure 8).
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The technology of color printing improved significantly following the Civil War. By the
end of the century, mass-produced chromolithograph posters became popular for both
advertising and home display (Varnedoe 236). Artists from Vincent Van Gogh (Walker 19) to
Norman Rockwell took advantage of mass reproduction techniques to bring their work to the
attention of a wider audience. Quality art could now hang on the walls in homes whose owners
would never be able to afford an original piece.
Progress, in the form of industrialization and urbanization, provoked responses in artists
and art lovers ranging from mild concern to passionate aversion. The commodification of art
raised moral and aesthetic issues. Human beings have long felt the need to assign special
meaning to certain objects. As a society, institutions such as "the state, the church, and most
recently the art museum" (Lears 6) designate those objects that merit assignment to an elevated
category. Individuals deem items like family heirlooms and collectibles to be priceless (Lears 6).
Painting, sculpture, and related items of fine art had traditionally "gained their specific character
by contrast with mechanical, applied or useful arts and crafts" (Walker 7). In order to classify an
object as art, it seemed self-evident, an item must be handcrafted, one of a kind, and of no
practical use. Before the Industrial Revolution, most human-made objects were unique by the
very nature of the handiwork required to create them. When mass production moved beyond the
manufacture of practical items into the realm of decorative objects, unprecedented questions
concerning the very nature of art became the subject of popular debate (Walker 6-9).
John Ruskin, the most influential art critic of the nineteenth century, pronounced that
items that were individually crafted by the hands of skilled artisans were vastly superior to "the
shoddy, machine-made products of the industrial age" (Bjelajac 235). He also advocated the use
of traditional materials like wood and stone, rather than modern material such as iron and steel.
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Ruskin's philosophy held considerable power in the art community of the era. The Arts and
Crafts movement and the Aesthetic movement were both spawned during the late nineteenth
century in reaction to the rise of low-quality manufactured goods. Both movements had a
significant influence on the taste of middle- and upper-class Americans.
Proponents of the Arts and Crafts movement posited that items made by small teams of
skilled artisans, without the use of machinery, were spiritually superior to objects created
through an impersonal, industrialized process. The working class, it was believed, derived
spiritual benefit from a lifestyle revolving around communal artisanship. The writings of John
Ruskin provided the foundation for the movement's ideals. Domestic architecture and home
furnishings were the primary beneficiaries of the Arts and Crafts movement. The movement
began in the mid-nineteenth century and prospered well into the twentieth century (Bjelajac 230231).
The Aesthetic movement's slogan was "Art for Art's Sake" (Hughes 239). Finding
prominence in the late nineteenth century, the movement had a tremendous influence on
American feelings about decorative art, as well as fine art. Beauty took on an almost religious
significance in the devotee's daily lives, particularly that of middle-class women charged with
creating a comfortable home. In order to enjoy an authentic life, the Aesthetic movement
declared, one's surroundings must be filled with objects of beauty. Oscar Wilde was a leading
figure in this movement, rejecting "the distinction between fine and decorative arts" (Bjelajac
274). During a speaking tour in 1882-3, Wilde attested that "an easel painting was no more
spiritual than a well-crafted painted vase" (Bjelajac 274-275). Roger B. Stein summarizes
Wilde's position by stating that the virtue in both the painting and the vase is "a beautifullycoloured surface, nothing more, and affects us by no suggestion stolen from philosophy, no
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pathos pilfered from literature, no feeling filched from a poet, but by its own incommunicable
artistic essence" (as cited in Bjelajac 275).
While the Aesthetic movement embraced Ruskin's theories regarding the moral value of
art and beauty, it did not adhere to his preoccupation with traditional methods and materials.
Without the Arts and Crafts movement's emphasis on the handmade, the "Art for Art's Sake"
mentality proved a boon to commerce. Decorating books and magazines, fine art lithographs,
and a plethora of mass-produced objets d'art flooded the marketplace in order to fulfill the
middle-class desire for an aesthetically-sanctioned domestic life (Lears 269-270).
This obsession with surface appearance found footing in spite of an underlying
discomfiture. Americans, with their Protestant roots, possessed an atavistic distrust of
decoration, associating it with lies and deceit (Lears 268-269). For the majority, the desire to
acquire the goods associated with success and respectability overwhelmed any hesitation. Some
people, including many American artists, did find fault with the fruits of the Aesthetic
movement. To their way of thinking, the acquisition of beautiful objects did not confer "moral
value" to an individual's existence; it only created the illusion of virtue (Bjelajac 232).
As consumerism became an American institution, artist's works began to reveal its
influence. Some embraced progress, reveling in the new subjects and ideas that presented
themselves. American painters mined leisure, industry, and retail for subject material. Joseph
Stella's Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras, painted in 1913, celebrated the sights,
sounds, and frenetic activity of an amusement park (Bjelajac 301-303). Anshutz's The
Ironworker's Noontime provided a realistic, gritty portrayal of America's working class.
Consumer products and advertisements began to appear as the actual subject material for art in
the early-twentieth century. John Sloan's 1907 Hairdresser's Window portrays not only a woman
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at work but also a market street, complete with advertisements and shop windows (Bjelajac 291).
Responding to "the omnipresence of packaging," Stuart Davis' painted Odol (Figure 9), a bottle
of mouthwash, in 1924 (Hughes 433). Another artist who anticipated the 1960s pop art
movement, including its discourse with mass media and consumer culture, was Gerald Murphy.
His 1924 painting, titled Razor (Figure 10), featured such mass-produced, branded items as a
safety razor, a fountain pen crossed, and a box of matches (Hughes 433).
Many avant-garde artists objected to the dehumanizing influence of consumerism on all
aspects of life, including art. Often these early twentieth century Modernists had socialist
leanings, identifying with "the working class's rebellion against the capitalist system of wage
labor and factory discipline" (Bjelajac 305). Cubism's fractured images mimicked the
disassociation common in urban life. The Dadaists' made their comment by presenting found
objects as their creative work, their form of "anti-art rebellion." Originating in Europe during
World War I, Dada sought to shine a light on "the cold rationality of modern technology and the
hypocrisy of middle-class morality" (Bjelajac 310-311).
The ongoing interplay between art, advertising, and consumerism began during the late
nineteenth century, affecting the content of promotional messages, the ideals and endeavors of
artists, and the American perception of art itself. Fine art continues to provide a rich source of
images for use by advertisers in twenty-first century America. The artworks that are
recognizable to the majority of contemporary Americans are limited to a few dozen pieces,
including da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Monet's Water Lilies, and Grant Wood's American Gothic
(Twitchell 186-193). In most cases, the primary exposure to these works is either through
advertising or through such consumer products as calendars and apparel. Direct and indirect
references to these works keep on appearing in advertisements for everything from cigarettes to
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automobiles. Consumerism continues to provide creative fodder as artists parody, embrace, or
comment on our society's obsession with mass media and material goods.
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Figure 1. 1897 Quaker Oats Advertisement.
Edgar R. Jones. Those were the good old days: a happy look at
American advertising, 1880-1930. (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1959) 85.
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Figure 2. 1917 Perfection Heater Norman Rockwell Ad.
Accessed 1 December 2002. Available from
http://www.paperboynews.com/inventorydetail.asp?number=y
1917.
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Figure 3. 1880 Thomas Anshutz's The Ironworkers Noontime.
Accessed 11 December 2002. Available from
http://faculty.dwc.edu/cernek/ss340/modernimages/anshutz.html.
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Figure 4. 1883 Ivory Soap Advertisement.
Accessed 11 December 2002. Available from
http://www.yale.edu/amstud/formac/amst190a/Oct21/Images/
Image154.jpg.
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Figure 5. 1886 Sir John E. Millais' Bubbles.
Accessed 11 December 2002. Available from
http://www.abcgallery.com/M/millais/millais2.html.
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Figure 6. Late 1880s Pear Soap Advertisement.
Accessed 11 December 2002. Available from
http://freespace.virgin.net/k.peart/Victorian/millbubble.htm.
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Figure 7. 1940s Pear Soap Advertisement.
Accessed 11 December 2002. Available from
http://www.speel.demon.co.uk/pib/fc00979.jpg.
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Figure 8. 1909 Sante Fe Railroad Advertisement featuring
Thomas Moran.
Accessed 1 December 2002. Available from
http://www.nga.gov/feature/moran/final20.html.
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Figure 9. 1924 Stuart Davis' Odol
Accessed 11 December 2002. Available from
http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/l
ibrary/images/726bg.jpg.
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Figure 10. 1924 Gerald Murphy's Razor
Accessed 11 December 2002. Available from
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/1997/objects/noframes/five/i
ndex.html.
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Works Cited
Bjelajac, David. American Art: A Cultural History. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice
Hall, 2000.
Ewen, Stuart. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the
Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1976.
Hornung, Clarence P. Handbook of Early Advertising Art, 3rd ed. New York: Dover
Publications, 1956.
Hughes, Robert. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
Jones, Edgar R. Those were the good old days: a happy look at American advertising,
1880-1930. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.
Lears, Jackson. Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America.
New York: Basic Books, 1994.
National Gallery of Art: Thomas Moran. Thomas Moran and the Sante Fe Railroad. Database
online. Accessed 1 December 2002. Available from
http://www.nga.gov/feature/moran/final20.html
Strasser, Susan. Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1989.
Twitchell, James B. Adcult USA: The Triumph of Advertising in American Culture.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
Varnedde, Kirk and Gopnik, Adam. High & Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture.
New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1991.
Walker, John A. Art in the Age of Mass Media. London: Pluto Press, 1983.