The connotations of the words “appeal,” “emotional,” and “aesthetically pleasing” vary depending on personal preference. Thus, the specific definitions of the key terms of this essay—“art” and “advertisement”—vary according to both individual and social tastes (Leder). In this essay, I define “art” as any genre of physical, audible, or edible subject that creatively appeals both to human senses and to human emotions. As a counterpoint, advertising is a similar medium that is designed to be attractive to its audience and to persuade its audience to buy a product or to act toward a certain purpose. Under this definition, a work of art could be Taylor Swift’s Blank Space. A piece of advertising could be Apple’s 2020 video: Privacy. That’s iPhone. – Over Sharing ("Privacy. That’s iPhone. – Over Sharing"). As a result, art can include advertisements, but not all advertisements constitute works of art. Correspondingly, not all art is advertising. This relationship creates a Venn diagram with overlap between two fields—art and advertisement.

In this essay I will first study ukiyo-e as an instance of the crossover between art and advertising, then present other similar examples of overlapping works. Woodblock prints and paintings proliferated throughout Japan from the late 17th to the late 19th centuries, one of the most important genres of the Edo period was ukiyo-e. Ukiyo-e generally depicts the leisure moments of urbanites and the atmosphere from which they emerged (Utamaro, Kuniyoshi). In the book Edo No Nyu Media, Katsuhiko Takahashi claims that ukiyo-e prints represent the historical background of the Japanese and not merely their aesthetic interests at the time. To view ukiyo-e exclusively as fine art misses the important cultural aspects of Edo period Japan that the form represents (Artelino). That said, in the article “Ukiyo-e Art or Media?” Dan McKee argues that Takahashi neglects to mention ukiyo-e’s function as mass media advertising at the time that it was produced ("Ukiyo-e - Art or Media?"). In the present, ukiyo-e operates as both an aesthetic and a historical object. McKee argues that ukiyo-e functions as both art and advertising that should be recognized for its practical uses and aesthetic aspirations. The debate over ukiyo-e’s primary form, as art or as mass media advertising, continues today. While Takahashi’s arguments seemed valid in ukiyo-e’s cultural context, McKee makes the point that advertisement and art can co-exist.  

I argue that Ukiyo-e exemplifies how advertising can also be, or become, art. Ukiyo-e consists of colorful woodblock prints that were printed and drawn mostly to advertise areas to potential tourists, serving as guides and souvenirs depicting the unique culture and scenery of a specific region (Leder). Thus, in early Edo Japan, ukiyo-e did serve exclusively as mass media. Its status as mass media made it a form of advertisement. However, as ukiyo-e made its way across the Eurasian Continent and the Pacific Ocean to the West during the 19th century, Westerners perceived the prints as exceptional artworks. Ukiyo-e is not only the combination of past and present views of art and advertising, but also, following the cultural cross-pollination between Europe and Japan, a combination of varying Japanese and Western perceptions of such media. 

The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai is an example of the ways Western painting, composition, and materials influenced traditional Japanese modes of art-making, changing the Japanese advertising industry (Met Museum). The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji uses the horizontal picture plane technique which originated in sixteenth-century Europe (Janson). Hokusai used the technique in all thirty-six of his paintings to depict a panoramic view of Edo city, drawing attention to the center of the print: Mount Fuji. Hokusai applied the lately acquired pigment prussian blue in almost all thirty-six prints to subjects such as mountains, oceans, trees, and the sky (“The Evolution of Ukiyo-e and Woodblock Prints”). Experts still regard the series as a work of art because of its cultural and religious significance. Because of the Japanese belief in the spiritual significance of Mount Fuji, the prints immediately became popular (Janson). The RISD museum stated that Hokusai, “should have achieved, with this famous series, his long-sought immortality.” People appreciated the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series as a work of art today (“Hokusai's Mount Fuji"). Even as a work of art, it also functions as advertising, or branding, for other products. Phone cases with the Great Wave serve as novelties, implicitly advertising the iconic Japanese landscape (“Aesthetic Japanese Art Phone Case Vintage Paintings Cover Fit"). Ukiyo-e is not only an advertisement regarded as art but also a work of art that can be advertised and can itself advertise. 

Posters also indicate advertisements can be fine art. Advertising posters from the 1950s and 60s now serve as decorations in cafes, bars, homes, and businesses (Hicks). Many such posters originated in French clubs during the 1880s. They tell stories pictorially, occasionally including sheet music or the schedule for upcoming performances ("Le Chat Noir"). These posters are not hung for decoration to sell products, but rather to create an atmosphere, serving a purpose closer to art than advertising. For example, Tournée du Chat Noir de Rodolphe Salis by Théophile Steinlen, initiated an artistic approach to poster design  in 1896. Le Chat Noir was a nineteenth-century entertainment establishment in Paris opened by Rodolphe Salis in 1881, thought to be the first modern cabaret. Now the club is best known for the poster of the black cat printed by Théophile Steinlen. In its popular days, it was a nightclub, a combination of artists’ salon and music hall. Today people hang posters similar to the iconic advertisement to conjure the artistic atmosphere of bohemian leisure that once filled Le Chat Noir.

Not only can advertisements become a form of art, but art can also serve as a form of advertising. Great artists sometimes incorporate advertisements into their artwork, like Andy Warhol did with his Campbell’s Soup Cans ("Andy Warhol. Campbells Soup Cans. 1962: MoMA"). The piece consists of 32 canvas panels, each painted with an eponymous Campbell's soup can, all of which are identical, save the flavors of soup with which they are labeled (Johnson). When the piece was first exhibited in 1962, Warhol arranged his canvases in an orderly fashion, repeating uniform colors, shapes, and sizes, to imitate the way cans of foods were shelved in grocery stores at the time. The Campbell Soup Company's labels became the subject of a work of art which, in turn, made the brand more popular (“Campbell Celebrates Andy Warhol and 50 Years of Pop Culture History”). Campbell's Soup Cans is a combination of art and advertising: although Warhol produced the panels via artistic techniques such as painting and printing, and displayed the panels in a gallery, the content and the arrangement of the panels reproduce a simulacrum of a product and an advertising technique. Warhol’s work drew attention to the Campbell Soup Company by bringing it to the field of pop art. The influence of Campbell's Soup Cans continues long after its creation, beyond the heyday of Pop Art. In 1994, the Campbell Soup Company announced in The New York Times that they were reaching out to the next generation of contemporary artists to draw their product with a prize of $10,000 (Bennet). By providing opportunities and funds to artists to advertise their product through art, Campbell’s honors Warhol’s legacy and leverages the inherent link between art and advertising. Moreover, in 2012, the company decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Warhol’s exhibition of Campbell's Soup Cans by “releasing limited-edition Campbell’s tomato soup cans and making Andy’s art available in the soup aisle of grocery stores” (“Campbell Celebrates Andy Warhol and 50 Years of Pop Culture History"). Warhol’s art inspired the company to develop a new marketing technique. Warhol used a product's packaging to make its advertisement into art, which then further promoted the product. The soup cans themselves and Warhol's inspired works thus symbiotically promoted one another. In part because of this symbiosis, Pop Art became a major art movement in the U.S. This interchangeable role of the piece as art and advertisement places it within the center of my “Venn diagram” between art and advertising. 

The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, Tournée du Chat Noir de Rodolphe Salis, and Campbell's Soup Cans are just a few examples of the many objects that exist in the overlapping area of the Venn diagram. Objects are defined in different ways depending on the lens through which people observe them. For example, a western lens might see an object as artwork, while an eastern lens might disagree, as in the case of the different cultural perspectives on ukiyo-e in the nineteenth century. Objects also change in identity over time: the Japanese woodblock prints were seen first as advertisements but are now viewed as artwork. The overlapping area of the art and advertisement Venn diagram demonstrates the fluidity and subjectivity of not just the objects around us in our daily life, but also the increasing fluidity of subjects as representations of both advertising and art.

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