The "United Colors" publicity campaign originated when photographer Oliviero Toscani was given carte blanche by the Benetton management. Under Toscani's direction ads were created that contained striking images unrelated to any actual products being sold by the company; a deathbed scene of a man (AIDS activist David Kirby) dying from AIDS, a bloodied, unwashed newborn baby with umbilical cord still attached, two horses mating, close-up pictures of tattoos reading "HIV Positive" on the bodies of men and women, a collage consisting of genitals of persons of various races, a priest and nun about to engage in a romantic kiss, and pictures of inmates on death row. The company's logo served as the only text accompanying the images in most of these advertisements.
The Maastricht exhibition showed the thematic links and juxtapositions within what may now well be called the body of work that the posters amount to. Toscani juxtaposes his billboard with the newborn baby to the poster with a Bosnian war victim's blooddrenched clothes... Life and death, beginning and end, consacration and sacriledge – this is immense symbolism, not just an advertising rebel's appropriation of topical images. Seen in this light, Oliviero Toscani's and Luciano Benetton's project goes well beyond pampering the media prone Colors generation with images they can comfortably worry about. It symbolically addresses existential moral problems in much the same way religious art has endeavoured to do since the Middle Ages.
The United Colors campaign is programmatic in that it embraces all of human endeavour - positive and negative.The often criticised contrast in the 'Colors' campaigns between the rosy images of healthy kids from all races and the gruesome pictures of crime victims and boat refugees underlines it is religious in that it needs both Paradise and Hell to tell its complete story of an irresolute humankind that needs to be reminded of their potential for both good and bad.
Toscani succeeded in provoking a debate about the pervasiveness and effectiveness of images through mass media of a scope that went well beyond academic discussion. The importance of this lies not in the development of new styles or forms - formally, Toscani's images and designs are rather conservative than revolutionary. What is new is that Benetton and Toscani have sought to open up a medium considered to be shallow and definitively 'low-culture' to content that is traditionally reserved for the highest regions of art and intellectual discourse.
What is frustrating to quite a few high priests of the discourse is that the effectiveness of Benetton's campaigns in raising the general population's awareness about for instance AIDS may well be far greater than any government or charity funded artistic awareness programme.
1 comment:
excellent post
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