With the rise of industrialization, globalization, and mass production, the manufacturing productivity has been dramatically increased and accordingly the availability of consumer goods. And with the rise of the mass media, various products have been targeted on broad groups of consumers. Consumerism, which is propelled by a system of mass production and high levels of consumption, has been one of the themes in art works from twentieth century till now.
In regard to consumerism and gender, I find two figures—Hannah Hoch and James Rosenquist--connected. Hoch once worked for a women's magazine of the huge Ullstein Press while Rosenquist once earned his living as a billboard painter at Artkraft-Strauss. They had been working within the mass media during the day and using the fragments from the industry to create art works at night before they moved to their own studios. The Beautiful Girl (1919-1920) and The Light That Won’t Fail I (1961) are examples I will use to explore consumerism and the relationship between consumerism and gender. As insiders of the mass culture, Hoch and Rosenquist take both content and technique from the visual vocabulary of mass consumption and transform them into art. Their approaches of creating art pieces witness changes in the consumer world at different time periods of history. As manifested in their works, The Beautiful Girl and The Light That Won’t Fail I, photomontage and billboard-like painting resemble the forms of advertising. And their different kinds of juxtaposition embody the experience of the consumer world and the artists’ allegorical comment on consumerism and gender.
Consumerism is not only acting within the works but also through the medium. . The two artists not onl...
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...ight That Won’t Fail I is worth studying.
Works Cited
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In historical context the rise of the free market industries is at its peak. In the year 1999 oil industries, electronics, fast food, clothing lines hit the front line. For the first time ever poor people are able to have what rich people have. Keeping up with the Jones, as many people say. There is this mindset of get it now and pay for it later. This leave most of the working class in debt. While consumers get the latest luxuries they are being “Consumed by Consumerism” (Domigpe). We have all become slaves to the brands of everything we buy. For example, when new electronics come out on the market that is mostly a want, but looks awesome, we buy it to keep up with the Jones and also because the advertisements tell us to. We also need the companies to live, because without them there is no employment. “Because of this circle, which is hanging over everybody in a modern society, the capitalists have pushed us into a place, where consumerism and capitalism go hand in hand” (Denzin). With the deb...
Gay, Peter. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider. New York, NY: W. W. Norton &
Advertisements in Life magazine showed women mainly in ways were they were responsible for kitchen duties and taking care of their husbands. In the early 1950’s, there were recurring ads of women with refrigerators. In an advertisement from 1950, a woman is dressed like a typical housewife standing next to the refrigerator showing all the features it entails. It gives off the message that during this period of the 1950’s, society saw women as the face of the kitchen and a majority of the duties as a housewife took place there. Another advertisement from 1950, gives a clear indication of gender roles. In the advertisement for a refrigerator, the women and her daughter are shown organizing their refrigerator, and the man is shown as carrying in the refrigerator. The advertisement expresses that women are more fit for domestic work and that men are more for the labor tedious work that a woman cannot do. In an advertisement from 1953 to sell health insurance, the man who is selling health insurance puts a picture of himself and his...
Mann, Thomas (1929), ‘The struggle against Fascism’ in Anton Kaes, Martín Jay and Edward Dimendberg (eds), The Weimar Republic Sourcebook‘, California: University of California Press
There are many people who are driven by consumerism and many people who wish they can get in touch with that type of world. Consumers are often promoted to advertise more of the products that they are buying to get more people to buy more products. Hari Kunzru, author of “Raj, Bohemian,” creates a narrator who is obsessed with maintaining his individuality and free will in a world that is overcome with consumerism. Believes that the world takes away individuality when consumerism comes into play and how hard it is to maintain their true self. In her LA Times article “Teen Haulers Create a Fashion Force,” Andrea Chang writes about the phenomenon of teenage Youtube users who make videos that publicize their latest shopping binges. She expresses
Much of society’s perception of women today, according to Kenon Breazeale in the piece, “In Spite of Women: Esquire Magazine and the Construction of the Male Consumer”, is based upon the attempts to construct women as consumers. Breazeale claims that much of society’s one-dimensional view of women has everything to do with how consumerism has been viewed primarily as a feminine attribute. Using an in-depth analysis of the early years of Esquire Magazine, Breazeale uses an academic, stoic tone in an effort to remain impartial, although it is rather apparent that she feels strongly against the magazine and all it stood for during this time period. Breazeale effectively convinces the audience that society’s perception of women today has been significantly swayed by their constant portrayal as consumers through an in-depth look at Esquire Magazine and how it not only portrayed women as extravagant, unintelligent spenders, but simply as objects of male desire.
For Walter Benjamin, the defining characteristic of modernity was mass assembly and production of commodities, concomitant with this transformation of production is the destruction of tradition and the mode of experience which depends upon that tradition. While the destruction of tradition means the destruction of authenticity, of the originally, in that it also collapses the distance between art and the masses it makes possible the liberation which capitalism both obscures and opposes. While commodity fetishism represents the alienation away from use-value and towards exchange-value, leading to the assembly line construction of the same--as we see relentlessly analyzed by Horkheimer and Adorno in their essay The Culture Industry. Benjamin believes that with the destruction of tradition, laboratory potentialities are nonetheless created. The process of the destruction of aura through mass reproduction brings about the "destruction of traditional modes of experience through shock," in response new forms of experience are created which attempt to cope with that shock.
Barbara Fuller, Cultures of the World: Germany (Tarrytown, New York: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1996), 77.
It was even before the counter culture took hold in the media that admen were rejecting technical expertise and bureaucracy, feuding with traditional means of advertising that put emphasis on rationality, rules, and statistics (56). Advertising reached a Creative Revolution, in which firms like Doyle Dane Bernbach lead the way in giving creative workers more say, and governed more opposition to traditional orders of power within the industry (57). It was also in advertising’s quest for creativity that it found a new understanding of consumerism. The industry recognized the need for nonconformity as an element of a shifted capitalism, and in turn rethought its ads in order to make similar products stand out and offer consumers the chance to be idolized and admired
Feuchtwanger, E. J. From Weimar to Hitler: Germany, 1918-33. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
Following the traumas of World War I, the Weimar Republic experienced economic woes (e.g., hyperinflation), budding new political ideologies and extremism, and radical advances in the arts. During the beginning of the Weimar Republic, Weimar culture was heavily influenced by German Expressionism, but this style changed drastically with the introduction of New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit). The New Objectivity outlook sought to reject the aesthetics and romanticism of Expressionism and focus more on themes of deliberateness, preciseness, and objectivity. Due to this, the Weimer Republic was ripe with contrasting artistic aesthetics and expressions that stirred debate and formulated a vibrant
Adorno and Horkheimer (1975) used the expression ‘culture industry’ to describe the monopolisation of culture. “The entire practice of the culture industry transfers the profit motive naked onto cultural forms” (Adorno, 2001, P.99). Adorno and Horkheimer believed that Capitalism was mass-producing popular culture which was fuelling consumerist ideologies. It was demolishing the aesthetic values of art and art was no longer ‘arts for art’s sake’ and ‘purposelessness purposes’ prevailed (Held, 1980, P.93). Adorno (2001) argued that popular culture and art in capitalist societies were used for distraction and escapist purposes. The ‘Culture Industry’ was seen to assemble masses to participate in it’s ideology, which has profound social impacts. The monopolisation of culture exploits and manipulates mass population for social control and p...
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Curry and Clarke’s article believe in a strategy called “visual literacy” which develops women and men’s roles in advertisements (1983: 365). Advertisements are considered a part of mass media and communications, which influence an audience and impact society as a whole. Audiences quickly begin to rely on messages sent through advertisements and can create ideologies of women and men. These messages not only are extremely persuasive, but they additionally are effective in product consumption in the media (Curry and Clarke 1983:
Consumerism has grown quickly and effectively. It has become so integrated into our modern world that it is no longer singled out. Individuals revolve their life around material objects and repeatedly fall for commercials urging them to purchase unnecessary objects. This system was spearheaded by Bernays. All of our consumer needs are tailored to ensure they are overly fulfilled. A simple task such as going grocery shopping, has been micromanaged by companies; they can pay for product placement. Holiday shopping, sales, blowout events, etc. are all ways to trick the individual into the consumer spiral. Commercials and advertisements find ways to appeal to our so called repressions and bring out our craving to obtain that object. The film explained that most things are attributed to sexual desire, so an example is a perfume commercial with an oversexualized ideal of a woman or man. (The Century of the Self) The economy is only one of the ways we are limited. Freud’s ideas have worked both on an individual level and on a larger