This Bud’s For You ….
I’m visiting my golf-crazed family this winter and so we’re watching the grass grow on manicured greens at the current tournament. I noticed the duffers are attired in caps and shoes, trousers and shirts, all bearing nearly as many endorsements from advertisers as a Ford Mustang at a NASCAR race. These guys are walking, putting billboards for everything from clothing lines to liquors.
What’s next? Politicians with suits endorsing detergents, ties emblazoned with corporate logos? Sure, I could lament the commercialization of the culture, but why? The battle is long lost. From TV to internet, the branding of America is a fact. Indisputable, irrevocable, irreverent and irreversible. Capitalism has won by a landslide. Corporations are legally people, freedom of speech, power of the purse, both unrestricted. I would be a fool to throw myself against this juggernaut.
Which is why I’m throwing in the towel instead and embracing total unbridled entrepreneurial enterprise. Us artists, for too long, have stayed serenely above the fray. But the time has come to … well, let’s not be squeamish any longer … the time has come to CASH IN!!
So … I’d like to announce that as of NOW, any corporations or companies or anybody with money can have their logo or product prominently placed in any and all designs of mine, tastefully of course, but big and bold, colorful or highlighted, in full view within my public glass artworks. My agents can work olut the details with your attorneys, but let the bidding begin. If the culture is indeed a reflection of our deepest aspirations, I would be an idiot not to make product placement the foremost statement of my art. Not to mention being all the poorer for not doing it. Beer logos, car brands, banking names, pop cans, cleaning products, airline slogans, cereal boxes, video gaming devices, all of them sprinkled among abstract designs can only enhance the artistic statement. Act now. I have a couple of projects on the design table, ready for your logo.
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