
Is Luxury Fashion Supporting the Arts or Subsuming Them?
Emily Watlington | Art in America | 11th December 2024
Big brands frequently use artworks or artists in their ads. Carrie Mae Weems’ iconic ‘kitchen photographs’, repackaged for the Bottega Veneta brand is a recent example. Some fret that this degrades the fine art reputation of photography. Accusations that the artist is “selling out” nowadays seem outdated, as is the assumption that fashion ads lack aesthetic merit. Mass media imagery has long provided inspiration for artists. Let’s defend artists’ scope to engage in “experimentation, weirdness and uselessness”.