ADC Poster Dubbed A "Panopoly of Self-Loathing"

Will Bloggers Gin up Scandal?

Posted by Ken Wheaton on 01.12.07 @ 12:49 PM

So the Art Directors Club sent out a call for entries for its 86th annual awards. Ho-hum. The accompanying art is a frightscape of apocalyptic imagery featuring Republican leaders holding hands with the devil, Hummers running over people, rising sea levels leading to anorexic surfing polar bears. Considering world politics in general and the politics of urban creatives, this doesn't seem much of a surprise. It would, in fact, usually go unnoticed by the wider world. After all, the industry had to create Advertising Week to get the average joe to pay attention.

But Charles Johnson, blogging at Little Green Footballs,has chucked the promotional art into the rightish end of the blogosphere. Oddly enough, of the 424 comments currently, on the site, as many seem to venture into faux-art criticism ("I'll tell you what it isn't ... Guernica") as politics (defense of the featured "neo-cons"). My own personal favorites are the questions about the chickens.

At any rate, from the right-wing blogosphere, it's only a short hop to Fox News, which we've heard is pestering ADC for interviews now.

Political silliness aside, one has to wonder, though, why such an ad-industry-related contest would use a poster that seems to lay many of the faults of the world at the feet of Wal-Mart, Starbucks, GM and commercialism in general. (Yeah, yeah, yeah. We realize that certain artsy types are happy to "fight the man" even while helping the man make gobs of money and taking a 15% commission). Or perhaps the artist is saying that Wal-Mart is just as much a threat as a nuclear-armed Iran and North Korea? I won't even pretend to know.

As far as the artist, Norbert Kox ... he's definitely got an interesting world view.