Flicking through an issue of New Statesman a couple of weeks ago, I came across a rather odd advertisement. A stark, blank page with a curious one-line poem set in old typewriter type that recalled my own early days in journalism. Titled “Isms”, it read: “The voice of Him that Crieth in the Wilderness”; or perhaps “Isms” is the poem, the first line is the title. A minimalist advertisement for the Independent? The following week, we had a shopping list, on the reverse side of a supermarket receipt, that looked like a teaser for a new campaign from Sainsbury’s. And most curious of all, the third advertisement: a full-page picture of a white fortified door complete with cemented steps.
Similar, but different, advertisements appeared in the Spectator. In both cases, the advertisements look totally out of context and stop the natural flow of the magazines. As they offer no explanation, comment or clue, they cry out for attention: “what the hell is this?”
Unknown to either, both New Statesman and the Spectator have been the subject of an elaborate and carefully worked out “artistic subversion”. The ads are not ads at all but original works of art by reputed artists. The New Statesman can now exclusively reveal who is doing what to whom.
Welcome to “political homeopathy”, which aims to subvert “hegemony” by any artistic means necessary. The argument is that any explanation of the world (political or cultural) is a form of domination, regardless of whether the explanation is good or bad. Taking their cue from the homeopathic idea that minute doses have a vast potential impact, these fictitious non-ads are designed to disrupt and challenge the different explanations of the world (broadly left-wing and right-wing) that underlie the two magazines.
The “advertisements” were placed by Pier Trust, a new art charity hatching out large-scale experimental and subversive projects. Last year, the trust organised a competition – worth £6,000 – for images and/or text work by artists for full-page insertion into political journals. The artists were told that their work would be “exhibited” in the New Statesman and the Spectator, and should “pick at political logic”. Some 90 entries were received; and the work of the winning artists – Gillian Blease, Drew Milne and Richard Wentworth – duly appeared in the magazines. For the Spectator, the trust used a front agency, while the New Statesman was approached more directly. Both magazines were grateful for the ads; indeed, the Spectator was concerned that the ads were also running in the New Statesman and wanted to poach future consignments. When people rang up to ask who placed the advertisements and what they were advertising, they were told that the Spectator‘s advertising department had been sworn to secrecy. In fact, the old fogeys didn’t have the foggiest idea.
“Both magazines are about explanation,” says Juliet Steyn, one of the trustees and a lecturer in art criticism at the City University. “The purpose of our intervention is to subvert the whole notion of explanation.” Andrew Brighton, head of public events at the Tate Gallery, says the idea behind the exercise was to “add a dimension otherwise absent from the assumptions of these house magazines of our two political tribes”. By being deliberately “off-message”, the mysterious ads were supposed to jolt the readers and force them to question what they saw and read elsewhere in the magazines.
There is nothing really new about this form of subversive art. In the sixties, the American sculptor Don Graham conducted a similar exercise in Vogue and other fashion magazines. But it seems that the folks behind the Pier Trust take their inspiration from the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935).
Pessoa was a truly enigmatic figure. He coined the term “heteronyms” to describe a coterie of 72 avant-garde poets and polemicists – all of whom seemed to lead elaborate lives and carry on real work in the public domain, but were in fact Pessoa’s fictional creations. Belatedly, Pessoa has been hailed as a pioneering modern master on a par with Picasso, Duchamp and other totemic innovators. But he is more uncanny than any of these. The postmodern idea of things pretending to be other things, advertisements that pretend to be art and art presented in the guise of advertisement, can be traced back to him.
Steyn and her co-trustees, together with Richard Appignanesi, Pessoa’s biographer, have extended the literary strategy of the Portuguese master to visual art. For their first experiment, they invited 24 artists to create original works through their own chosen fictional identities. The result was “Heteronymous”, a spectacular art exhibition and theatre event held in Rome in summer 1997. “Heteronymous” occupied the cells and vaulted splendour of the monumental San Michele, formerly a prison for young offenders, and caused something of a shock to the Roman system.
There is a link of serendipity between Pessoa and Pier’s current attempts at “political homeopathy”. Pessoa was also a pioneer advertising copywriter. He was commissioned to write a publicity slogan for Coca-Cola on the eve of its introduction to Portugal. Pessoa subverted his assignment by playing with the Portuguese words for “strange” and “compelling” and convinced the director of public health that Coke was an addictive substance. The official ordered the entire shipment to be dumped in the sea – and Coca-Cola had to wait some 50 years for its entry to Portugal.
We will not have to wait that long for Pier’s next attempt at political subversion. Now that its identity has been exposed, however, I suspect it will reappear under a new, equally fictional label. I know it has bigger targets in its sights. So beware! Next time you see an advertisement or a story in the press, or even bump into a lamp-post on a footpath, it may not be as it seems.
The writer’s “Introducing Cultural Studies” is published by Icon Books, £8.99
Content from our partners
Related
