Picturing Modernity in Fine Art and Advertising

This is the winner of the 2017 Alfred J. Seaman Award for best undergraduate paper on advertising and society. The essay couples art history and advertising to identify and analyze artistic and advertising responses to key changes in society as part of the onset of modernity in the early twentieth century. Selected, specific works of Impressionism addressing industrialization, time, sight and the gaze, social distinction, and mass culture are compared and contrasted with selected, specific advertisements that address the same changes. The essay shows how art and advertising formed a joint response to the dislocations of modernity in the early twentieth century. The essay is accompanied by recorded conversations between the award winner and her research mentor who discuss independent undergraduate research, the writing process, and how to approach the study of advertising and society.