For Tommy Hilfiger and "Superman of Madison Avenue" George Lois, though, the building blocks of modern American culture are not only objects of daily life but icons to be venerated visually and lusted after openly. You've heard of food porn? This is object porn, and the photos reveal everything from the Gettysburg address to Frankenstein's monster to a steaming pizza.Here, the cherry Life Saver becomes a fetish object and icon of modernism, rendered at five times its real size and shining like the fuselage of some scarlet fighter jet. The Morton Salt umbrella girl, Ted Williams, Rosa Parks, Bugs Bunny and Jiffy Lube become glossy family photos on the mantelpiece of the American brain. Faces — Mickey Mouse and Frank Sinatra, Mount Rushmore and Jimmy Durante and the Playboy centerfold (OK, maybe not her FACE) — take on profound meaning in the Chunky Soup of the American zeitgeist.
What have we come to when we look deep into the national identity and find mere object lust? You could argue that we've reached a pinnacle, that American society has always been about acquisitiveness and obtaining capital, and that this catalog of the American soul is a fitting tribute.
0 comments:
Post a Comment