Artist-cum-Advertiser… W+K and Maurizio Cattelan are DTF with OkCupid
Yes, it’s true: the new OkCupid ads are designed by Maurizio Cattelan and photographed Pierpaolo Ferrari.
Cattelan, a contemporary artist and trickster of unequaled magnitude, has crossed over from major museum retrospectives to dating app advertisements? Cattelan, who has exhibited worldwide, appeared as the “subject” of the 2016 documentary Be Right Back, whose Untitled piece once sold at auction at Sotheby’s for $7.9 million… is now making poster adverts?
I absolutely adore Toiletpaper, the ingenious, biannual visual magazine Cattelan and Ferrari produce and publish. You gotta check out the website.
And I suppose you could say it’s not a huge leap from Toiletpaper to OKC ads… both are visually stunning, both have humor… but how can one reconcile the barrier between art and advertising, when one of the world’s greatest artists is producing ads?
In some ways, I guess that’s what Creative Currently is all about: tearing down the walls between art and ads.
I suppose the short answer is, “It can. And when done right, it is.”
The best ads are remembered not for the product it sells but for the feeling it conveys. And isn’t that art? Something that stirs us, makes us feel, makes us think?
Shouldn’t we hold advertising to the same standards as art? Especially as we are more and more inundated with ads and posters and banners and videos, why wouldn’t we want the product to be beautiful and evocative?
Perhaps this campaign, OkCupid’s very first ad campaign, done by Wieden+Kennedy is itself a means to an end? The images are great but perhaps there’s more here than is readily apparent? And it seems that W+K gets it, OKC gets it: Yes, “dating deserves better;” advertising deserves better too.
Hopefully, this campaign will herald a new wave of weird, beautiful ads by artists or otherwise! And really, it’s not a big surprise that W+K and someone like Maurizio Cattelan are leading that charge. Huzzah!
Originally published at creativecurrently.com on January 16, 2018.
