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Hamburgers, fish, and floor cake

[This is an essay that I wrote as the final paper for my History of Modern Art class.]

"What, exactly, is the point of this?" a young child asks his mother during a trip to New York's Museum of Modern Art. The this in question is an enormous, wall-sized canvas covered in huge splatters of paint. To the art historian, it is the work of the American Painter, Jackson Pollock. To this young boy, it is absolute rubbish. The boy continues, "What's so impressive about it? All it is is paint thrown at a surface. I don't mean to sound cliché, mother, but I could paint this." The woman accompanying the small boy turns to him and explains that, "the artist isn't necessarily trying to sell you a piece of fine craftsmanship. He's trying to sell you an idea." That, in a nutshell, describes what much of modern art can be seen as: advertising.

Sit through an advertising class at art school and it is immediately evident. It's all about selling ideas. Advertising is no longer about simply sticking up a sign that says "cars for sale" and being done with it. Now, it's all about telling you that the car for sale isn't just a car. It's a sexy car. Or a smart car. Or a sophisticated car. All of the sudden, whole personalities are being applied to things that previously were entirely utilitarian. It isn't products that are being sold anymore. It's images. Whether it is Coca-Cola, Nike shoes, or even Britney Spears, it's not the actual physical object that advertisers are trying to sell. It's the brand. It's the manufactured identity associated with the product.

The task of turning a completely mundane item into a much-needed commodity isn't a simple one, either. Ask any advertising student. It's hard work. The world of advertising is competitive. It's dog-eat-dog. It's rough. After all, there is a lot of pressure to come up with consistently brilliant ideas before any of the competition does. One might even say that the act of creating advertisements is an art form. If one compares advertising and branding to works of art, one finds that the language that advertisers and artists use isn't so different. Whether it be a Brancusi, an Oldenburg, or the McDonald's arches, both the artist and the advertiser use subconscious, subliminal associations to send the viewer a message.

"Simplicity,"Constanin Brancusi stated, "is not an end in art, but we usually arrive at simplicity as we approach the true sense of things." His 1930 sculpture, Fish, illustrates this concept perfectly. If one were to take a quick glance at the sculpture, one wouldn't see a fish at all. One would see a slab of dark grey marble propped on top of a limestone pedestal. In actuality, that's all the sculpture really is. A large, curvy piece of rock. However, as the work's title suggests, it is not a simple piece of stone that the artist is trying to sell, it's an idea. This isn't a normal slab of marble, Brancusi's inner advertiser tells the viewer, it's a fish.

It isn't that the sculpture resembles a fish so much as it embodies several characteristics that one associates with fish. The piece of marble is shiny and smooth, its one end significantly thinner than the other, sloping down into a sharp point. It almost looks like a small stone one might see on the beach, eroded from its long friendship with the sea. If one were to look at the surface of the marble, one might get the impression that they are staring at an image of the ocean. The marble itself is a smooth, dark grey, almost blueish-green, interrupted by long, cloudy streaks of white that have a striking resemblance to white-capped waves crashing on the water. The polished surface of the marble reflects light in a way that resembles the sun shimmering on top of the ocean or the way a fish's metallic scales sparkle as it flickers in and out of view beneath its waves.

The elongated shape of the sculpture and the way the white streaks on it slash across its surface also seem to suggest movement. Indeed, because of the asymmetrical, fluid shape of the work, when one moves around it, taking in every side and angle, one gets the distinct feeling of motion. The object becomes not just a stationary slab of marble, but a dagger, flitting elegantly through space, charging forward, slicing through a thick and turbulent sea.

The streamlined structure of the sculpture is also representative of many of a fish's physical characteristics. Some say that its triangular shape is a super-simplification of a fish's form, it's small head expanding outwards into a wide, sweeping tail. Others say that the object's shape represents smaller, individualized parts of a fish, perhaps a pectoral fin or an enormously magnified scale. Further still, others might associate the structure not with anything in the organic realm, but with man-made, industrial objects. The shape does seem to echo the jutting slant of a motorboat as it jets across the waves or the powerful silhouette of a submarine as it raises its head above the water.

It is these associations with fish and the ocean that really gives Fish its personality. Without the associations that the viewer brings to the object, it would remain a simple piece of marble, an arbitrary form with no depth beneath its reflective surface. This simplification of forms and visual onomatopoeia is something that is highly characteristic of Brancusi's work. It is also something that is seen throughout pop culture in one of its most low-brow art forms: branding and identity. If all of the fish in the world decided to form a union, one could imagine Brancusi's Fish image being right at home atop of its office building or stamped onto its stationary and envelopes. Simple forms and associations are absolutely key when it comes to creating a brand. Take, for example, the McDonald's arches.

The popularly dubbed "Golden Arches" were introduced in 1953 when they were incorporated into the architectural plan of a new McDonald's outlet opening in Phoenix, Arizona. Originally, the architect Stanley Metson had designed the slant-roofed, red-and-white-tiled hamburger stand sans arches. However, Dick McDonald, one half of the sibling duo that started the fast food chain, decided that the design needed a little more visual pizazz. He sketched, much to the distaste of the architect, a massive, yellow arch onto either side of Metson's plan. The design stuck and was subsequently built into many of the company's future outposts. In 1962, the arches were incorporated into the chain's logo, joined together to form a curvy, yellow letter "M."

Besides adding a visual punch to the facade of their restaurants, the McDonald brothers probably chose the yellow arches because of the things that people would associate with them. Consider, for example, the shiny, yellow coating that has been applied to the massive arches. Yellow is probably the only color in a child's crayon box that is associated with the feeling of joy. At the same time, the arch itself is a lovely, playfully curvy, organic shape that sweeps like a roller coaster over the roof of the building. All-in-all, the jubilant color combined with the soaring arch sends a very strong message. It isn't hamburgers that McDonald's is selling. It's happiness.

As the popularity of McDonald's started to explode across the country and the world, the company became less covert in its marketing schemes. In 1963, the company introduced the nation's children to Ronald McDonald, the chain's cheerful clown mascot. Then, in 1979, they introduced the infamous "Happy Meal," further enforcing the concept that happiness could be bought off the Dollar Menu. Through this time, the Golden Arches didn't disappear from McDonald's identity. However, as the company expanded globally, they came to symbolize something else entirely.

Flipping through the pages of Art History, the arch can be found numerous times as a very powerful symbol. From The Arch of Constantine in Rome to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the arch is a symbol of victory, of conquest, and of triumph. Similarly, as McDonald's entered into the global market, many people saw its arches as a symbol for capitalism's triumph over the world. The almost Gothic-looking double arches inducted more and more followers into their congregation as the company crusaded across the globe. No longer did the Golden Arches symbolize happiness and the fun-loving quest for the American Dream. They became an almost universal symbol for gluttony and corporate greed. As McDonalds as a brand became more duplicated and its identity more and more replicable, the company became almost a caricature of itself, a real-world piece of Pop Art. After all, it is this clash between the concepts of playful innocence and corporate obesity that many of the Pop Artists of the sixties touched on in their works.

If artists are all trying to sell the viewer an idea, the Claes Oldenburg room at the Museum of Modern Art is the fine art equivalent of an adult bookstore. The imagery seen in the Oldenburg room (cheeseburgers, candy apples, bowls of ice cream) is innocent enough, but underneath all of the frosting and grease lies a world of delicious, tantalizing sin. Just one look at the way that Oldenburg fetishizes a mere slice of cake in his massive sculpture, Floor Cake, and it's obvious. There's a little more for sale here than sweets.

At roughly nine feet in length, Oldenburg's floor cake is the focal point of his entire room. It sits, flopped unceremoniously but at the same time, suggestively, right in the middle of the floor, its fabric frosting dripping down its soft back. It doesn't say anything, but just as Manet's Olympia dares you to look at her, the cake dares you to gaze upon it and perhaps even take a spoonful of its rich, moist meat. One can practically imagine the light-as-air frosting melting in the mouth, the chocolate filling squashing satisfyingly on the tongue. "You know you want to," it seems to whisper from beneath soft blankets of coffee-colored icing.

Although the cake is made out of completely inedible material (canvas, foam rubber, and cardboard boxes, to be exact), it is for some reason more appetizing than a real-life slice of chocolate cake. The splatters of cream-colored latex that cover its pillow-soft body are more delicious looking than any actual frosting. Why is this, though? How is it that this mattress-sized cake lying on the floor can tempt us more than a regular old slice of cake sitting in a bakery? It's because of what this particular slice of cake suggests and what we associate with those suggestions. It seems that the message Oldenburgh is trying to send is just as multi-layered as the two-tiered cake he is depicting.

The fact that the sculpture contains so many allusions to beds, blankets, and pillows is enough to tip anybody off. Oldenburg's Floor Cake is positively oozing with sex. Not just sex, though, a platter of delectable vices. The cake embodies nearly all of the Seven Deadly Sins. Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, Pride, all wrapped up into one mouth-watering package. When it comes down to it, Oldenburg's sculpture is about temptation and indulgence. It is America, in cake form. Just as we gaze upon Oldenburgh's cake with lust and desire, it looks back at us like a mirror, exposing our greedy mouths and inner gluttons (with a sense of humor, of course).

To suggest that pieces of fine art such as Brancusi's Fish and Oldenburg's Floor Cake have anything to do with corporate atrocities such as the McDonald's logo might outrage purists. Still, when one really thinks about it, are art and advertising really all that different? Many modern artists speak about sending a "universal message" or a message that is comprehendible to anybody at any time. The funny thing is, that is exactly what advertisers try to do on a daily basis. In a world where a premium is put on getting the message out there and fast, the lines between art as idea and idea as advertisement are becoming more indistinct. Our world has, especially in recent times, become a world of symbols and hidden meanings. A red light tells us to slow down before we get killed by oncoming traffic. A wreath made out of prickly thorns warns us about potential biohazards. A piece of stone tells us that it's a fish.

May 14, 2008 at 10:14 PM

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