Csaplár Ferenc szerk.: Lajos Kassák / The Advertisement and Modern Typography (1999)

Advertising and Art - Comments on a Poster Exhibition

ADVERTISING AND ART (Contribution to the debate organised by the Society of the Friends of Nyugat [The West] on 21 January 1931.) The difference between advertising and propaganda, in my opinion, is that while the advertisement praises a product of a business venture, propaganda attempts to bring public awareness to something in the public interest. An advertisement raises an article above another, propaganda displays the examples of culture. As we cannot speak of prostitution, so too we have no right to speak of a holy art. Man today lives in society, in an industrial and commercial society. It is only natural for the contemporary writer not to write only of abstract things but also to raise mundane issues, such as the themes of industry and commerce. Nonetheless, I cannot imagine how literature could involve itself in advertising. An artist cannot influence the public, but, by way of a formal problem, he can call attention to the existence of an article. In this respect, therefore, we can only speak of an optical effect. A poster is related to a manufactured article, but this relationship is quite different from how literature discusses the same article. I myself, for example, am prepared to go to a factory and I am ready to have a look at everything, from the management offices down to the shop floors. There I would see and write not only of what machines are produced in the factory, I would also publicise my impressions, I would also write of the kind of wages workers get, the kind of work they do, and COMMENTS ON A POSTER More than fifteen years ago, in an article called "Streets and Advertisements", I wrote that the advertisement pillars of Budapest were packed with posters, but these coloured spots lacked elementary force so much that, with their importunate formalities, they either outraged the public in the streets or caused even the most watchful eye to listlessly overlook them.... The streets of the destroyed city are again full of posters wishing to serve not so much business advertising but social propaganda. Unfortunately, as the advertising manoeuvres of business had made an irresolute and haphazard impression, so today we can at best call the urge to express social propaganda in posters and textual notices no more than good-willed fumbling. No doubt, we must make use of all possible means, including street propaganda, in the interest of reconstructing the city. The managers of these necessary activities are probably well aware of the significance of their task; nonetheless, they are unable to reach the desired goals toward which they apparently strive. There are many causes for this failure. One of them, for example, is the intellectual fatigue of the inhabitants of the city; it would be extremely difficult to arouse interest in these masses even with the most timely and appropriate methods-further obstacles in this respect are the not always purposeful conceptions and also of what goes on in the management offices in the mean time. If such a report were published in a newspaper as a kind of publicity, I would certainly be prepared to write it. But if it were not published it would certainly be a kind of prostitution on my part to do work in advertising since the writer writes about what is seen as important according to his inner convictions. And in the factory, he is interested not only in the product, but in the producer, the man as well, and, in fact, primarily in the man. Books also need to be advertised, but not in the way this is done today. For what happens today is that bad books are promoted with good advertisements in the interests of business, and if there is no interest involved, a good book will never be advertised. Let there be good reviews first, then advertising might follow. When we edify and enlighten the public on how they are related to the surrounding society, we are involved in a superior kind of propaganda from a human point-of-view. And if this is so, advertising or propaganda cannot be regarded as desirable or undesirable and socially incorrect from a national or an individual point-of-view, because participation in such propaganda is compulsory for the whole of literature and each writer. NYUGAT, 1 FEBRUARY 1931, PP. 153-154. EXHIBITION the lack of creativity in poster designers. What is more, the papers print the sort of critical remarks that stultify the more daring experiments by our artists in the eyes of passers-by. What these writers do not realise is that they expose themselves as critics to those poster designers who are somewhat conscious of their obligations and conscientiously experiment with better and better methods. As a rule, these irresponsible hacks and mean punsters have attacked those very poster-like notices that were best and that most effectively fulfilled their role in the papers. It is therefore no wonder that our graphic artists who follow proper directions and are internationally significant do not take part in this area of necessary social work. The propaganda department of the Social Democratic Party, wishing to lessen these anomalies, organised a poster competition and publicly exhibited the material that was assembled. The idea was a good one, but the standard of the material displayed can hardly be called satisfying. The achievements of the majority of the participants manifest no more than affectionate naiveté, in both colour and form; their posters fail to point beyond the limits of hard work. It is rather sad that our accomplished artists have so demonstratively kept away from this noble competition, and it is equally disappointing that the youths participating have as yet not 23