Fine Art/Commercial Art (cont'd)

Here's some thoughts on the matter from Roberta Carasso:

Yes, commericial art is about production. I am reminded how there was a period when many commerical products - floor covering, shampoo bottles, even clothing, borrowed from Piet Mondrian's geometric painting, and how fabrics took on a Color Field look of Abstract Expressionism; and then advertisements went to Pop Art. Some are still stuck there. Japanese Anime has also trickled down to commerical art.

If you didn't know it first came from fine art, you would think: "How innovative." Even furniture and architecture is influenced by what sculptors are doing in their studios. The problem today is there is such a cross-over that if you don't know the source, it is very difficult to follow the origin of an idea.

An interesting project is to flip through various magazines and see how advertisments are often based on what fine artists come up with. This is not knocking commerical art. It's innovation is within its field, but it is the human tendency to borrow from the one ahead and not from the one behind. Those ahead are more inventive. I notice that advertisements are taking a lot from installation where there is a suggestion of something much larger by including individual items in an open field of space. This allows the imagination to fill in gaps rather than spell everything out.