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“Every city dweller ‘writes’ his/her own city and the intersections and intertwining of these individual writings become a manifold story that has neither author nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces…”
- Michel de Certeau
Yes, it’s a story of the city within the city. It’s written on billboards, hoardings, graffiti and all sorts of public art platforms. Imagine a city; the yellow band of lights – traffic sputters to a halt; city roads, signals, meandering ways through the jostling crowds, everything occurs in systolic-diastolic precision. Looking around one can chance upon the ceaseless wires of connectivity, zillions of cables, the electric posts like guarding sentinels, and the dissemination of cultural signifiers across the city pane. The metropolis and cities are the places crammed with cultural symbols and artistic expositions. Passing by one can see the vibrant and embracing landscape of the commercial danglers - billboards, glow signs, neon placards, graffiti filling up the streets and mesmerizing the teeming onlookers on their way along popular travelled highways, streets, and avenues.
In this blog, we wish to get a little curious about some of the contemporary billboard art and expressions and how they impact the cityscape images. Be it the streets of California, Tokyo, or Italy, it is a fascinating tour within the artistically adorned interactive commercial space. Let’s delve into an immersive experience.
Billboard Art and Attention-Grabbers En Route: Art Exhibitions on the Road
Billboard arts can take forms of painting, mural, digital billboard display, or any type of illustration and artistic expression. What billboard art and murals try to create is a dialogue between the artwork and the surrounding environment, in the public space. It involves the passing motorists, pedestrians sharing artistic communication and witnessing the changing images of the city.
Billboards are becoming more and more alive and penetrating in the cityscapes. They are the so-called heroes of the commercial culture, big and robust, calling out the attention of the passers by when they are cruising off the road. It captivates, engulfs you and crawls into your private attention space and makes you stir. While you are on your way to the office or the next destination, you get to cross a massive colorful display of artworks that are showcased on the billboards – showing off the creative minds, just like an open-air exhibition.
How the Craze for Billboard Art Came to Play?
The popularity of billboards gained much pace since the 1990s and it became an artistic medium of expression with artists like John Fekner utilizing billboards to make the social and political issues flagged. The pressing social issues of racism, poverty were made public using images and graphics that were poignant and bold and were essential to catch the onlooker’s attention. And billboards are never going to go anywhere, but to flourish more, and blur the boundaries of traditional art and pop arts, with contemporary artists like Jenny Kendler using this popular form of public expressions for issues like social justice, discrimination, climate change and identity.
The rise of digital billboard as a nouveau artistic medium has opened new vistas for artists with interactive features and displays.
The whole idea behind this new found means of artistic communication was to revolutionize the set idea of space and communication. Artists can reach out to a wide range of public and passers-by by making use of their creative skills and start dialogues with them regarding some emerging and important social matters.
How TBC Tried to Make Sense in a World Full of Information and Dialogues
Since 2014 the city of Los Angeles has seen an initiative by the TBC (The Billboard Creative) to present the arts of contemporary artists on the billboard advertising spaces. The artworks by Cadila Rawles, Narsiso Martinez, Ramiro Gomez, etc. were inviting, introspecting, and thought-provoking. It’s like throwing a mouthful of sky into the urban landscape to offer a grand exposition for the urban traffic, who can witness the heightened artistic expressions of fine art on a magnified scale.
The paintings and the artworks shown there depict the emerging issues while influencing the onlookers and passers-by with their artistic voices and forms. It is an endeavor of the TBC to bring to the fore the budding and lesser-known artists and give them the much-needed exposure through their arts.
During the period of the CORONA pandemic some of the physical art museums were closed for the public, and that has been the driving force of the TBC foundation to bring the exhibition spree on the roads and let the public have the glimpses of contemporary art and graffiti through these gigantic canvases. It has helped to connect the residents of the city with the new and emerging artists in Los Angeles.
Billboards as the Kiosks of Outdoor Advertising: Connecting Advertisement and Art
Whatever we see in our naked eyes, we believe, and billboards are here to make that communication easy and effective with attention-grabbing graphics and precise information for the public at large. This is the most relevant outdoor advertising medium and creative space for communication. Companies and niche brands use this space for public domain art with a little twist, and a commercial message.
Artists like Shaquille Aron Keith worked for the popular brand Diesel with the famous ‘Diesel is Dead’ catchline in the New York SoHo area. The message was stark and provocative and urged people to react instantly, roping in more enquiries and eventually propagating sales. The motto was to tease and trigger curiosities buzzing around the new brand. And that was done for all intents and purposes.
The ‘Absolute Night’ campaign was another inspiring one, for the Vodka brand, and they were featured worldwide (around major cities of the world) showcasing the works of the local artists. With each city showcased in that campaign one could get the cultural flavour of the city. Works like Andrea Wan ‘Love comes in every flavour’ or ‘Absolut Evil,’ ‘Absolut Enchantment,’ ‘Absolut Recycle’ campaigns created for various cities made the Vodka ads enticing and aesthetically pronounced.
Promoting Art Projects and Artists through Billboards: City Art Projects
Several art projects are organized to promote local artists through billboards like the ‘Art in the City’ project of Michigan city, USA. The Arts Council started the project with the aim to encourage the artists of the area and to promote outdoor public art through their creations. It was a juried art program and a joint venture with Adams Outdoor Advertising. The artistic creations of the local artists were shown on the digital billboards attracting visitors or the residents of Michigan who greatly appreciated the art installations on billboards as a part of their regional and cultural canvas.
There were strategic locations for the billboards to appear so that more visitors or city dwellers could see the art project while they moved about. The visually stunning creations not only created impacts on the Greater Lansing and surrounding areas but they also raised substantial awareness about the budding and promising artists of the locality.
Story behind the Billboards: Creating Conscious Public Art Spaces
From the larger-than-life platform of art displays for the general viewers on the road to the electronic, street-smart photo bill boards, the commercial and public art space has evolved through time. Back in the 1980s artists started using this viable space for their art showcases like the ‘Truism’ series by Jenny Holzer, the ‘Protect Me from What I Want’ message creating reactions around the world, engaging more viewers in an impactful experience.
Although there are times people (in vehicles) speed past the billboards in a rush, or they find them difficult to read due to distances, these arenas open up more unique discourses, creating new avenues of public communication. Other than consumerist billboard ideas, there are examples of artists trying to pass on messages of social and political awareness through this platform. There are several thought-provoking ads and campaigns on the highway that will stop you in your tracks.
The challenges are big to combine legibility, aesthetics, attention-grabbing power, and something deeply stirring in the billboard messages that make them survive. Designers and artists experiment with this space to meet art and advertising in every way. Surpassing the commonplace advertisement gimmicks, these spaces try to engage the visitors and onlookers in an exciting new way blending ethnic flavour into them.
There is a common saying that in graffiti people force you to see what they want and steal the space to do it, while corporate billboard advertisings steal peoples’ lives and use their lives to buy the space then force people to see what they want!
So, next time you walk past a billboard, and you pause a while, think of the power of public art and how it pushes the boundaries of the ‘corporate’ and challenges the notion we have about commercial space & artistic communication. There are loads of them to catch on – are you ready to stop in your tracks then?
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