The Artist as Adman

 

"The word MERZ is nothing more than the second syllable of Commerz," Kurt Schwitters explained of his branding of his one-man art movement....  As a fine artist, Schwitters gathered urban detritus into collages.  In 1924, he established the advertising agency Merz Werbezentral to address a broader public, shape its appreciation for functional design, and harness a stable income.  Based in Hannover Germany, the agency, later renamed Werbe--Gestaltung, served a range of clients, from a furniture maker to the city's  streetcar company.  Combining bold, often asymmetrical layouts, typographic elements reflecting information hierarchies, and photography, his designs emphasized split-second legibility for busy viewers."

To left, Programs for Hannover (Germany)Municipal Theater Opera House productions.   by Kurt Schwitters.  1930-32.

Poster for Dammerstock Housing Development.  Karlsruhe Germany.  1929.  Kurt Schwitters.

"Advertising-Constructors:  We understand perfectly well the power of agitation...  The bourgeoisie understands the power of advertising.  Advertising is industrial, commercial agitation," wrote the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in the period of the Soviet Union's New Economic Policy (1921-1928), when capitalist-style commerce was temporarily endorsed.  Determining that new conditions in the years following the Russian Revolution demanded a new civically engaged role for artists and poets, Mayakovsky and the artist Aleksandr Rodchenko formed the advertising agency Reklam-Konstruktor (Advertising-Constructor).          Rodchenko designed the bold graphics while Mayakovsky contributed the pithy slogans....  As advertisers, their goal was not simply to sell such products as light bulbs and cigarettes, but to compel consumers to support the new state:  to spark their desire for socialist objects and to transform that consumerist longing into a civic one, to shop as responsible Soviet citizens."

The poster below is advertising Tea Directorate Cocoa Powder.  The word slogans are:

COMRADES, THERE'S NO DEBATE, SOVIET CITIZENS, WILL GET IN GREAT SHAPE, WHAT IS OURS, IS IN OUR POWER, WHERE'S OUR POWER?, IN THIS COCOA POWDER

Max Bill, Swiss, Poster for exhibition of furniture by Wohnbedarf at Le  Corbusier's Masion de Verre, 1933.

Max Bill, Swiss, Poster for exhibition on the Neubühl housing project, Zurich, 1931.