Forms of Persuasion

Book excerpt: "Forms of Persuasion is the first book-length history of corporate art patronage in the 1960s. After the decline of artist-illustrated advertising but before the rise of museum sponsorship, this decade saw artists and businesses exploring new ways to use art for commercial gain. Where many art historical accounts of the sixties privilege radical artistic practices that seem to oppose the dominant values of capitalism, Alex J. Taylor instead reveals an art world deeply immersed in the imperatives of big business. These projects unfolded in Madison Avenue meeting rooms and MoMA galleries, but as the most creative and competitive corporations sought growth through global expansion, they also reached markets all around the world. From Andy Warhol's commissions for packaged goods manufacturers to Richard Serra's work with the steel industry, Taylor demonstrates how major artists of the period provided brands with "forms of persuasion" that bolstered corporate power, prestige, and profit. Drawing on extensive original research conducted in artist, gallery, and corporate archives, Taylor recovers a flourishing field of promotional initiatives that saw artists, advertising creatives, and executives working around the same tables. As museums continue to grapple with the ethical dilemmas posed by funding from oil companies, military suppliers, and drug manufacturers, Forms of Persuasion returns to these earlier relations between artists and multinational corporations to examine the complex aesthetic and ideological terms of their enduring entanglements"--