Before, advertising was the individual means for the manufacturer to promote his wares, now it will be an intense force in which individual desire unconsciously rises towards social beauty.’Īs head of the decorative arts department of the Rotterdam Art Academy, Jongert had ushered in the future by appointing Piet Zwart as teacher (a job Zwart held from 1919 to 1933). There will be a wonderful unity of forms and colours. Life will now appear to our eyes in a splendid glow, which is created by the industry and promoted by advertising. This is how the word should be, desirous of all that makes life worth living. We must all be grateful to advertising: it gives an appearance of newness to the world and teaches us more graceful manners. In 1927, Jongert wrote an enthusiastic song of praise to ‘reclame’: ‘Advertising gives us lust for life, it brings us the knowledge which can not be found in books. Jongert, a painter as well as a commercial artist, argued in favour of a more realistic collaboration between artists and businessmen: ‘The industrialist will have to have confidence in the artist, but the artist will have to appreciate the reasonableness of the constraints which life imposes on the industry.’ Jongert himself had extremely good relationships with the industry: one of his long-time clients was the Rotterdam coffee and tobacco factory Van Nelle, for whom he created packaging and showcards which formed an ever-evolving corporate identity. If this direction is taken a step further, then the poster as well as the wooden fencing, which have both been given their own form of art, will eventually turn the whole street into an object of advertising in the good sense.’ In a 1923 issue of Wendingen, Jac. Berlage wrote: ‘Nobody can be annoyed by advertising which is artistically sound moreover, it will also result in a stronger approval of what it is aimed to convey. In his Introduction to The Development of the Applied Arts (1923), the architect H.P. There were others who had a more positive view of the phenomenon. At the same time, their products, as well as the artists that were hired to execute them, were held in contempt by designers who felt they were on the other side – the elite of idealist aesthetes who worked for literary publishers and cultural organisations. The rational approach suggested by ‘marketing methods’ made it easier for advertising agencies to be taken seriously by businessmen. Dutch admen capitalized on a new invention called marketing, which they imported directly from the United States – making transatlantic trips to research its daily practice. While the collaboration between business and artists had been an uneasy coalition up to circa 1918, a truly professional advertising sector developed in the 1920s. It can be a simple announcement, and it can be a shout.’ Roland Holst evidently despised the shout he also rejected the idea, held by Hahn and others, that advertising could play a social role as a source of information: ‘There is no question of telling the truth, only of enforcing a dubious version of the truth.’ Roland Holst, a graphic artist who designed books as well as cultural posters, gave a lecture in which he stated: ‘A poster can fulfill two different requirements. wrote: ‘With the opening of exhibition the fight has begun, or rather: it had already begun earlier, when the magazine De Bedrijfsreclame (Commercial Advertising) was first published.’ His colleague R.N. The controversy between the two groups had been signalled as early as 1917, when the Dutch arts-and-crafts society VANK held an exhibition titled ‘Art in Advertising’ ( De kunst in de Reclame). The 1940s – the years of the German occupation, and the immediate postwar years – were a particularly grim episode in the relationship between these two groups of professionals. For many decades, there was bitter hostility between Dutch admen and graphic designers. It seems we have finally grown up.’ It was more than just rivalry. In an interview in this journal,¹ Will de l’Ecluse of UNA Amsterdam spoke of ‘a somewhat childish rivalry’ between the two communities, adding: ‘Four or five years ago, all of this was suddenly over. Throughout the 20th century, graphic design in the Netherlands has followed a two-track course: design and advertising were always two separate worlds.
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