Advertising as art
Today, Hollywood stars are paid to appear in adverts in the desperate bid to attract buyers’ attention. Increasingly sophisticated commercials are created, in the hope that they will go viral and be shared across the globe. Sometimes, one thinks with longing of the artfully designed promotional posters of the past – a relatively unobtrusive way to promote a company’s products or services. Surely, Renato Casaro, John Alcorn and Frank McCarthy, who designed numerous 007 movie posters, never imagined that their work would be worth thousands, in some cases hundreds of thousands, of euros and would be celebrated with dedicated exhibitions in famous galleries around the world. Christie's, meanwhile, is celebrating poster art in its own way, with a specialist auction that time-travels through the history of advertising – as the video shows.