PICASSO: 'PAPIER-COLLÉ' - VIOLIN, GLASS, NEWSPAPER, BOTTLE - (1912/13) - (T. ZARA)  ... in process

The structure and functioning of this generative object of the new experiential paradigm:

The image's 'reality aspects' are manifold:

The illusionistically rendered appearance of objects (paint><skill) evokes internal 'recognition' and associations - (nb: the only 'reality level' of previous culture pictures.)

-  The physical 'picture'- made from glued paper, collaged fragments, charcoal and paint marks - is present in attention as an independent external thing.

-  Collaged fragments of objects whose independent status is equal to 'picture' itself. However as parts of the picture, displaced from their external context, they become mental 'images of themselves'. Thus though the 'outermost' of the 3 layers they are also the most 'fantastic'.

A consequence of the above is that such an image is not, as in the previous culture [ref: CLAUDE], a picture of things but has itself ' thing­status' (ie: is a "tableau-objet"). This 'thing-status' is the external limit of its content. Since this 'thingness' is itself a structural unit in the configuration of that content, it is not as in the previous culture simply the limit to the 'reality' of pictorial illusions, but is the conformation of the actuality of content.

The picture space is multi-valent:

-  Each pictorial-part is the 'centre' (of attention) of a particular structure of space relations. Seen from another 'centre' it occupies a different place. The whole picture is organised differently around each of its parts.
   
-  The multi-spatial order mediates the relations between 'reality-levels':
   
Example of one such relationship:

The GLASS - looked at from the 'realistic' wood-grained VIOLIN side - takes a position behind the whole face of the violin which slopes back towards it. This mental 'illusion' is shocking to ones physical sense since the newspaper on which the glass is drawn, is cut away to leave the silhouette of the violin on the white paper beneath.

The physical picture and the visual-mental picture are thus in shocking contradiction! Their confrontation forces one to give them equal existential credence and to realise that they are the essential 'inner' and 'outer' aspects of experience. Such 'pictures' are experiential-forms. 

CLAUDE: PAINTING - SEAPORT WITH THE EMBARKATION OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA - (1648) - (NG, LONDON) 

The structure and functioning of this previous-culture ('Renaissance') painting:

Single 'reality-level', all one 'substance': an illusion of appearances (paint><skill):  

A 'magic' dissolution of physical surface - an illusory place in mental space, completely unrelated to the physical painting or its objective context. The painting as thing is 'out-of-sight' covered by the illusion of its subject.  
  
Singular space: arranged round one focal position:

-  The illusory space recedes from the picture edges in a simple diminishment towards the point of focus and disappearance - even of illusions! (A diagram that proves its existence by focusing an infinity). 
  
-  Attention is drawn into this 'distance' and one is 'inside the picture' as in a dream, the only route to the outside' is admiration of skill. 
  
-  For all its simplicity the 'dreaming' is cleverly articulated: the visual infinity focus, the picture's centre, is hidden behind the ship of embarkation - the passing out of the foreground world, the moment of the final loss of Cartage will be seen only from its deck. The false focus of the setting sun and the false goal of a distant island increase the pathos of discovering the hidden focal end! 
  
In contrast, the Picasso is not a 'vision' - it mediates an active relating which progressively substantiates experience.

MAX ERNST: "LOPLOP PRESENTS A FLOWER" - COLLAGE, FROTTAGE & OIL-PAINT ON WOOD - 39x32in - (1931)

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ADS: 'POLO' MINTS & 'LISTERN' MOUTH-WASH - (HOARDINGS - TUBE STATION PLATFORM) - (1983)

The structure and functioning of these two advertisement images - one a sophisticated representative of the 'new-paradigm', the other a crude 'previous-culture' lash-up - is contrasted below :

The 'POLO' ad is a post-collé image with very sophisticated engineering of expectations, both liminal and subliminal. It separates and relates visual-space, tactile sensations, verbal commands and suggestions. A highly integrated and powerfully affective image - semantically complex though apparently visually simple!  in process

In contrast the 'LISTERN' ad is a pre-collé 'illustration-with-title', which tries to achieve noticability with a trivial 'Renaissance' perspective visual trick and the illustrative-cliché of 'speed-lines', indicating too-fast-to-visually-register dynamic motion.    in process

MAN RAY: 'CADEAU' ('GIFT') - (POSSIBLY ONE OF MAN RAY'S RE-MAKINGS OF THE ORIGINAL STOLEN OBJECT) - (ORIGINAL 1921)

This collage-object is a precursor of a type of manipulation of automatic mental processes used in certain complex and subtle publicity images [next pic] which exploit the disseminated potentials initiated in such early 20thC collage-objects. 

The dread enshrined by this 'weapon' is emphasised by associations with the smoothing of the iron across the cloth and the warm and homey memories of mother* ironing. The presence of a hot iron, the sharp shock of inadvertent contact, is characterised here as a danger in-waiting!

[*At that time almost only women ironed !]

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AD: MARLBORO KING-SIZE CIGARETTES: CRUSHED CARS - (HOARDING PLUS CRUSHED CARS - PARRY ST. x WANDSWORTH RD. (VAUXHALL ROUNDABOUT), LONDON, SW8) - (1988)

This ad was located on a very busy and complex traffic roundabout, it needed to be strident and shocking ... eye-catching - to be noticed among the stresses of driving. 

It subliminally provokes anxiety - so reach for a cigarette! The brand is inserted 'in parallel' with this disquiet/anxiety - "Marlboro country" is a macho "Marlboro Man's" world of danger, toughness, daring and decisiveness. If crushed corpses of cars evoke careless and reckless driving that's dealt with by the real driver's automatic reflex of "It wont happen to me - I'm careful and experienced, skillful, etc". The subliminal anxiety lasts however and fuels the use of 'comforting' cigarettes.
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AD: 'MARTELL' BRANDY - (SMALL HOARDING ON STREETS) - (1986)

A highly integrated and active image formed from collaged visual and text fragments related as a single semantic structure:

There are 5 main elements/visual layers: 
1 a woman's gaze,
2 a man's back, separating her face from ...
3 a hand with rings and ribbon,
4 two filled glasses and bottle with label, 
5 text (line and heading).

The most surface image element, the copy-line "Look no further", commands ones gaze not to enter the Ad's space, increasing the potential of ones (male) desire to reach the spatially deepest and most attention claiming element, the woman's gaze.

The prohibition is (subliminally?) reinforced and sexually specified by her wedding ring touching its 'O' to the o of "..no.." - then lifted: as the ring is discovered to be on the 'wrong' hand.

The last barrier to meeting is thus removed except for a well groomed male back. A flat collaged cut-out, its lack of substance simply provokes my (male) sense of competitive success.

Our relationship established I notice she invitingly pushes forward two filled glasses ('mine' in front of the prohibitive surface copy-line), while playing with a disheveled pink ribbon, caressing a (female) glass rim and pointing to the (male) bottle whose label "Martell" also endorses as a heading the activity of the whole fantasy/image.

AD: 'COURVOISIER' BRANDY - (MAGAZINE PAGE) - (c1986)

Compared to the previous ad this one is pathetically incompetent and un-influential. It uses a commonplace pre-collé pictorial presentation structure of 3 parallel planes - the previous-culture's 'theatre' or 'peep-hole' space-design. Its one attempt at wit is to encase its 'how-to-use-its-product-situation-example' in a proscenium frame shaped like a 'Napoleon' (the shape that's used as its mnemonic brand-image on all its products and ads). Even this simple schema however is a muddle of awkward relationships - the Napoleon 'frame' seems to weirdly bulge to contain and present to us (the 'theatre audience') the foreground bottle [1], whose position pushes the text title to the side, apparently pointlessly disturbing the ad's banal symmetry.

NOTE :

1. Which 'breaks the picture-plane' (established by the text-title) - a Renaissance 'reality-proofing' device (Re: Crivelli - Annunciation - 1486 - National Gallery, London.)

AD: 'CHILDREN'S SOCIETY' CHARITY FOR DISTURBED CHILDREN - (HOARDING - RAILTON ROAD, HERNE HILL, LONDON, SE24) - (1984)

The content and action of this image was not confined by its frame. The image is collaged into this (and other) locations like an illustration into a 'synthetic-cubist' picture [note that the aesthetic quality of such an illustration is irrelevant - its significance is as a fragment of the 'real/'ready-made' exterior world inserted without transformation into the mental realm of a 'painting']. 

A frightened child's face is staring through the hoarding as if through the letter-box of the street, inducing a shock so exactly mirrored in its enormous eyes that one allowed one's assessment of the reality of one's surroundings to be transferred through its gaze, changing their scale to a toy town - if only it could enter this huge nursery of adulthood !

Thus I was forced to participate in a drama of childish insecurity mediated by an image that included our surroundings.

AD: 'CHILDREN'S SOCIETY' CHARITY FOR DISTURBED CHILDREN - (HOARDING - RAILTON ROAD, HERNE HILL, LONDON, SE24) - (1984)

Though the ad image is startling, beyond 'shock' it has no meaning or motivational context without its external public location. 

Ads such as these - images collaged into their surroundings - are unlike the commonplace majority of ad images that seek to capture and collect attention completely within themselves/their hoarding-frame (like self-contained 'pictures' on a white gallery wall). These 'collage-element' ad images turn any location that can support a public hoarding into a special version of their story.

AD: 'BENSON & HEDGES' CIGARETTES: 'INVISIBLE AD' - (8-1992) - (HOARDING - VICTORIA STATION, LONDON)

This yellow panel with its suspended junk-objects, with no text or title, blending into the muddle of signs around it, but over an unavoidable route across the vast station, makes no proclamation of its source except in so far as its decor of 'arbitrary' shoes, braces, telephones, rope, picture-frame, limned in ones peripheral memory an unfocussed version of an image already familiar from years of ad-conditioning - a B&H packet.

Reinforcing subliminally, yet erasing as a foreground choice: constituting the image as if it were a 'potential of backgrounds' - feeding that part of us which 'notices without thinking' - cuing it for the moment when, from a shop's bewildering medley of brands, it can precipitate a Gestalt-driven choice. This ad purposely submerges itself in order to infest 'recognition' at a level below that of aware-discrimination !

AD: 'BENSON & HEDGES' CIGARETTES: 'INVISIBLE AD' - (8-1992) - (HOARDING - VICTORIA STATION, LONDON)

A repeat of the previous caption in 'longhand':

This (presumably 'experimental') ad-installation presents a 'peripheral' image of a B&H packet. It implies the aim that though involvement is good, recognition is not sought, it is even diminished :

Via a long-running ad-campaign, an image of "B&H Gold" packets has been clarified and imbedded in public recognition to the extent that its gestalt can now be reduced in terms of 'clear present clarity', in order to capitalise on the automatic aspect of 'recognition' and render the image a more efficient subliminal affecter.

Firstly - its identity of this hoarding with a B&H packet is diminished by its 'sideways' position. The 'uprightness' of this position is reinforced by the objects (if noticed as such!) that constitute its pattern: they hang - vertically, which helps reduce identification of the sideways B&H packet to a mere yellow background wall.  

Secondly - if the image is consciously noticed and curiosity aroused, its constituents are discovered to consist of a rather confusing (and thus mentally involving) sequence of objects: shoes; braces; telephones; a rope and a  picture-frame. Their apparent triviality yet 'important' location provokes curiosity and 'proves' that what exists here (in this practical context of rail-station and notices) is a peculiarly 'special' message. The fascination of these objects draws attention within the perimeter of the overall B&H recognition factor: the yellow rectangle, delaying brand identification or even (especially from nearby) the basic realisation that this installation is in fact an ad - a designed and affective image ! 

Thirdly - it milks 'sophistication' by referring to 1960s Minimalist art works - a sophistication that accrues to the subliminally identified brand, and which may dispense a dose of vanity during subsequent selection and purchase. Plus, it constitutes yet another distraction that distances  recognition of the vulgar manipulative intentions of the ad designers.
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AD: 'BENSON & HEDGES' CIGARETTES: LOG-CABIN XMAS CARD - (XMAS-1979) - (MAGAZINE PAGE)

As an experiential form/event this ad has 3 stages:

1  As a specialised media image which
2  takes control (realigns the gestalt) of other external images 
3  which provoke desire and action:

Stage 1:  A magazine page with a familiar Xmas-card picture - a cozy log-cabin in Santa's frozen forests. The warming glow in this ones welcoming window is however a gold B&H packet !

Stage 2:  Apparently outside the B&H-rented picture space, subliminal to ones attention absorbed within the picture joke, a collaged (real-photo) red Xmas-card bow, with shadow.

The real cards outside this magazine, baited with this bow, hook this fascinatingly altered image to themselves, transforming their stale familiarity into mnemonics for B&H.

Stage 3:  All cozy-cabin cards are now reminders that without the comfort glow of B&H the images on the mantle this Xmas will be less than welcoming - the act of buying the cigarettes closes the gestalt and restores the security of completeness.

AD: 'BENSON & HEDGES' CIGARETTES: 3D MOVIE AUDIENCE - (20-3-1996) - ("TIME OUT" MAGAZINE DOUBLE-PAGE)

AD: 'BENETTON': BABY - (9-1991) - (HOARDING - RAILTON ROAD, HERNE HILL, LONDON, SE24)

A new-born baby on a suburban road. Insertion of this utterly ubiquitous but shockingly unfamiliar image-subject onto public hoardings in the UK provoked a "storm of protest" (often excused by the oblique criticism that it "has nothing to do with Benetton's product: clothes - really?!). Pathetically (and apparently without any publically mooted analysis) this public-educational tool was quickly banned by our Advertising Standards Authority! Censoring a 'newly discovered normal' image because it is unfamiliar and suddenly disturbs the 'background' of many familiar sights, deprives us of the new (social) insights that such a conjunction provokes. 

This extraordinary ad campaign collaged its ordinary/shocking images into the malleable context of our public mental space.

AD: 'BENETTON': BABY - (9-1991) - (HOARDING - RAILTON ROAD, HERNE HILL, LONDON, SE24)

AD: 'BENETTON': BABY - (9-1991) - (HOARDING - ROAD NORTH FROM OXFORD ST, LONDON)

Though both objects - new-born baby and young male motorbiker - are commonplace, the simple fact that one is rarely seen in public throws their relationship into the mental 'cooking-pot', provoking immediate unfamiliar observations, interpretations, insights. 

This is an example of an imaged subject matter that is so informative yet simultaneously so shocking in its implications and associations, that it acts like a 'window' into reality - an 'active icon' rather than a mere picture!    ... in process 

AD: 'BENETTON': HEARTS - (28-3-1996) - (HOARDING - S. CIRCULAR RD. (CNR: NORWOOD RD.), TULSE HILL, LONDON)

AD: 'BENETTON': HEARTS - (28-3-1996) - (HOARDING - S. CIRCULAR RD. (CNR: NORWOOD RD.), TULSE HILL, LONDON)