C O N S U M E R I S M
#L u c k y S t r i c k e a d
From https://yourstory.com/2014/08/torches-of-freedom?from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0
There were several challenges to getting women to embrace the cigarette as a symbol of their freedom, the foremost being the social stigma attached to it. In the nineteenth century it was thought that only fallen women, ‘whores’ and ‘prostitutes’, would smoke. Only sly, devious and ‘characterless’ women were shown to be smoking on screen. The next was to teach women how to smoke properly. Apparently the few ‘respectable’ women who did it publicly made a mess of it and Hill was anxious that such clumsy displays would put fashionable women off this pursuit. The women hired for the project had to be convincing and appealing enough to influence the masses, yet not too good looking or ‘model-y’ so as to give truth to the vamp stereotypes. Edward Bernays set about designing the Torches of Freedom campaign, a PR stunt the first of its kind in the world.
Bertha Hunt smoking during Easter Parade, 1929
1st April 1929 ran a story titled, “Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of 'Freedom”. As women all over the country took to this new found symbol of their emancipation aggressively, Bernays must have had the last laugh at the ironic date of the story.
Ten young women followed Bertha Hunt that day down Fifth Avenue, brandishing their torches of freedom. The audience’s imagination was captured as newspapers enthusiastically reported on this new scandalous trend. Bernays used “sexual liberation as a form of control.” The days that followed saw Bernays not only emphasizing the liberation movement for women as far as cigarettes were concerned, but also waxing eloquence on its slimming properties and glamour quotient that ensured women getting hooked to Lucky Strikes. Sales doubled from 1923 to 1929. Bernay’s justified his $25,000 paycheck to Hill and their fruitful association continued for another 8 years that saw a miraculous jump in the sales of cigarettes. While voting rights were yet to be granted to women, Eddie Bernays got them an equally symbolic though hollow torch of freedom in a spectacular fashion.
Ted Noten
# Love bag 2005
collaborated with Prada
collaborated with LV
# Bird bag 2014
Tom Sachs
Tony Futura
The better things we got, the better person we will be in the public
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During the Renaissance, a large number of artists also appeared because of the large number of "vain" merchants and nobles wanted good pictures of themselves.
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Bauhaus movement made design convenient for large-scale production while retaining aesthetic taste.
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After World War II, in developed countries such as the USA, productivity has substantially exceeded the necessary material needs for a people's survival. And at that time there was a idea came up called 'planned obsolescence', which means when they designing a product, they will design a useful life in a planned way in order to better iterate the new products.
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Consumerism is on the rise.
# S K I I B A R E S K I N P R O J E C T
Because people don't know what those abstractions are, and brands inject their.own goods into these abstract meanings with help of the mass media.Thus it's hard to think of ways to recognize and express themselves in addition to consumption.
P e r s o n a l
u n d e r s t a n d i n g :
— In the marketing promotion, the status of women is held high. A woman smoking a cigarette on fifth avenue is "free" and "romantic," but any "freedom" based on consumption is virtual.
— Advertisers are subtly telling women that if they consume these things, their status will rise and their quality of life will be better.
— Jean Baudrillard
Nowadays,the purpose of our consumption is no longer to survive, but to desire.We show our taste through consumption, to mark the class we belong to by the symbols of consumption.
People never consume things themselves. People always think of things as symbols that can highlight you or are used to get you out of the group.Also like a reference about what is considered ideal and a higher-status group.
— Thorstein B Veblen,1899, <The Theory of the Leisure Class>
When people are unable to understand each other's identity, occupation and property through interpersonal communication, consumption becomes the main means of people's identity and personality and the main way of social relations reproduction.
# The way of Costco selling luxury in ShangHai
Banksy
# LOVE IS IN THE BIN
Sotheby's London sold the painting at auction on 5 October 2018, at an artist-record price of £1,042,000 (then equivalent to US$1,366,672 or €1,184,360).Within seconds of the gavel drop, the canvas began sliding out of the bottom of the frame and shredding itself to the audible sound of a siren and the surprise exclamations of attendees. The work was housed in a deep frame and was plugged in to facilitate built-in electrical lights, which powered the hidden paper shredder as well. Sotheby's said they had no foreknowledge of the mechanism.
After the shredding, there was a negotiation with the buyer to confirm the sale, and on 11 October it was agreed that the sale would go through at the original price. The work was renamed by Banksy's representatives from Girl with Balloon to Love is in the Bin. Market watchers speculated that the self-destruction would increase the artwork's value.Sotheby's released a statement that called it "the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction".
It was reported that the artist uploaded a video of the event onto Instagram, showing the construction of the shredding mechanism and frame, but deleted the post.Banksy has released another video indicating that the painting was intended to be shredded completely, showing the painting being shredded with the words: "In rehearsals it worked every time".
XU ZHEN
# XU ZHEN Supermarket
From https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/experience-the-art-of-emptiness-with-xuzhen-supermarket
video: https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/experience-the-art-of-emptiness-with-xuzhen-supermarket
When Chinese contemporary artist Xu Zhen debuted his conceptual work SHANGHART SUPERMARKET at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2007, it created quite a sensation. Posing questions about authorship, artistic creation and consumerism, the installation reconstructed a Chinese convenience store where visitors were invited to shop for products, albeit empty ones. Stripped of their ostensible purposes, the empty products found enthusiastic buyers all the same.
In XUZHEN SUPERMARKET, shelves are stocked with familiar products, from familiar Western offerings like Colgate toothpaste to bottles of Kweichow Moutai, the popular Chinese liquor. Closer inspection, however, reveals the store as devoid of any actual products, and instead offering the empty packaging alone. These false offerings proposition viewers to make a purchase, merging art and daily life.