ARTH1908W

According to one estimate, the average American sees over 5,000 advertisements in a day. Targeted social media ads, billboards, illuminated shop signs, glossy magazines, product placements in movies, junk mail—our everyday visual experience is saturated by images designed to sell us things. Using a series of interrelated case studies, ranging from 18th-century shop signs to online influencers, we will investigate the history of popular commercial culture from a transnational perspective with an emphasis on the cross-border development of advertising in Europe and its colonies with occasional comparisons with the United States. Advertisements are not transparent historical documents. Nor, despite their often-obvious aesthetic qualities, are they equivalent to paintings, sculptures, or other works of fine art from the past. Drawing upon the Goldstein Museum’s and Andersen Library’s rich collections, we will explore the global convergences and divergences of the modern advertising industry, probe historical and contemporary theories of visual communication, analyze the shifting boundaries of “high” and “low” art, and chart the evolution of graphic design as a profession. In the last weeks of the course, students will work in teams to craft a mock advertising campaign inspired by the historical materials studied earlier in the semester.

001475

Global Perspectives

Periodic Fall