Can Art on a Billboard Still Be Called Art?

Palisades Car Insurance is making an apparent effort to beautify the highways of New Jersey, its home state. How? Not through the Adopt-A-Highway program. Not by planting trees and shrubs. No, Palisades is making its contribution to society by displaying art - fine art - on billboards.

The campaign, which began on July 13, is called "Drive With a Smile," from the company known as "The Nice New Jersey Car Insurance Company." According to a recent New York Post article, the goal of the campaign is three-fold: 1) to give drivers something pleasant to view while stuck in traffic; 2) to showcase the work of local New Jersey artists; and 3) to promote the scenic locations of New Jersey. The first two billboards are already on display (see photos below); the art for the remaining billboards will be selected by online vote from New Jersey scenes submitted by local artists. Art submissions, viewing, and voting takes place at drivewithasmile.palisades.com




The question on the table is this: can art on a billboard still be considered art? If a billboard displays a painting, can it still be seen as an eyesore? Or does the painting succeed in beautifying the signage?

I think that Palisades' campaign sounds like a great thing - it sounds like a community service, turning the highway into an art gallery. Beautifying the road. Benefiting society. But, based on the photos above, it seems that Palisades only made a half-hearted effort at their corporate social responsibility.

With the Palisades logo and "Got a Nice Piece?" tagline taking up so much space, it seems that drivers would hardly be able to get a good look at the art. The view seems comparable to looking at a thumbnail of a photo online, without having the luxury of opening the full-size version. Or, if the highway were an art gallery, visitors would be examining an 8" x 10" painting from across the entire length of the room.

I agree with mep's comments on the subject from a discussion on ArtBistro.com: "if you are going to put a landscape painting on a billboard then make the whole 'canvas' just that." Palisades ought to relax their ego and remove the logo and tagline. Let the art fill the entire billboard. Let the billboard truly be art, and truly bring joy to drivers. They ought to build the Palisades brand through the free publicity Palisades would get (both through news channels and through viral marketing), not with a logo that crowds out the art and ruins the effort.

If Palisades simply cannot bear to post a billboard without the Palisades logo, they could place the logo in a corner of the full-sized art. Or, better yet, simply print the website URL, drivewithasmile.palisades.com, along the bottom of the art.

Palisades is almost-but-not-quite there on corporate social responsibility and viral marketing. Hopefully they will change the layout before they post the remaining billboards.

Crowds, Art, and Psychology

Last Saturday evening, my friend Lindsey and I attended the Dallas CityArts Festival, an annual outdoor celebration of visual and performing arts in downtown Dallas. We joined the throngs of people gathered along several city blocks in 100-degree heat to browse artists' booths, listen to music of varying genres, watch dances from different cultures, enjoy free admission to the local (air-conditioned!) art museums, and eat bratwurst and snow cones. Both Lindsey and I are artistic souls (she graduated with a degree in art; I was an art major for two semesters), and events like this thrill us to no end.

Although Lindsey and I arrived after the museums had already closed for the evening (much to our dismay), we thoroughly enjoyed looking at artwork by local painters, sculptors, photographers, and jewelry-makers. However, the plight of these artists saddened me somewhat. Here they were, sitting in stifling heat for the better part of three days, lost in the never-ending row of booths belonging to their fellow artists, watching as hundreds of people surveyed their work without so much as a word to the creators, and hoping - mostly in vain - that someone might actually love some of their work enough to BUY it.

Alas, it seemed that most of the patrons of the Dallas CityArts Festival were more interested in looking at art rather than buying it.

Despite my "artophilia", I myself, having only recently graduated from college, was certainly not in a position to fulfill the artists' hopes of selling their several-hundred-dollar artwork.

However, I experienced a curious psychological phenomenon as I wandered in and out of artists' booths: when I encountered a booth in which empty spaces and discarded price tags betrayed evidence that someone had actually purchased artwork there, I was much more eager to visit that booth and study the work therein. I was also more willing to investigate whether the artist had inexpensive prints or notecards that I might be interested in purchasing. If someone else had loved a piece enough to actually spend money and take it home, perhaps the artist's work was good enough that I, too, would like it and even want to buy it.

Researcher Robert Cialdini calls this psychological phenomenon "Social Proof" - the idea that we take cues from what people around us do. If others act a certain way, we assume that it is reasonable to act in the same fashion. This is especially true when we encounter new situations in which we are unsure of how to act.

If "Social Proof" affects us so much, maybe the artists at art festivals could use this principle to their advantage. A psychology-savvy artist looking to sell his work could set up his booth and hang his paintings around the tent, but intentionally leave one or two painting-sized empty spaces where a person would expect to see a piece of artwork. Then he could watch and see if more people than normal enter the booth interested in viewing and purchasing the art.

Would this have worked for the artists at the Dallas CityArts Festival? I don't know. But it wouldn't have hurt for them to give it a try.