Two nudes.

      The other day this headline caught my attention: “Topless Woman Found. Details Sketchy.” It was in the New York Times (7/20) and, no, it wasn’t about a stripper – it was about a painting, “Odalisque in Red Pants” by Henri Matisse. Evidently, FBI agents in Miami arrested two people and accused them of trying to sell the portrait said to be worth $3 million. As the story goes, the theft was first discovered in 2002, when the Contemporary Art Museum of Caracas was contacted by a Miami gallery owner saying that someone had offered to sell it to him. They inspected the painting on the wall and discovered that it was indeed a fake, and a lousy one, to boot. Someone had removed the original from its frame and put the fake in its place, leaving it to be exhibited as if it were the genuine article. And no one noticed. For at least two years, no one noticed!

         Sadly, I found it analogous to our industry, where the quality of our work has been slipping, where we’ve put forth less original work, and yet hardly anyone seems to have noticed.

         In an interview with Contagious, John Hegarty said he, too, believed that quality has fallen off in the past three or four years, but his claim didn’t make much of a stir. It should have made a stink. We go about our business, tolerating way too many distractions, accepting the fact that we have less time and too few creatives, maintain more excuses for mediocrity than ever before, and we seem to forget what really great looks like.

         Yes, I see more technology, more integration, clever new media but I see less art. I wonder if I’m just being nostalgic, but I don’t think so. When I was grinding through the ranks, I was inspired more by clarity than by wit, more by something true than something weird. As a copywriter, I admired people like Riney and French and Delaney, people whose artfulness transcended their sell. Likewise, I’m more moved these days by imagination than innovation. And there’s way too much emphasis on the later.

         In a wonderful little essay in the New York Times Book review (7/29), Roger Rosenblatt wrote, “The difference between invention and imagination is the difference between Mr. Ed and Swift’s Houyhnhnms. One is a talking horse (of course): the other bears the burdens of civilization.” We’re spending too much time thinking about how we can make use of Pinterest, and less time making something that approaches importance.

While advertising can’t possibly achieve as much as art, there can be enough art to have a modestly similar effect. Trying is everything. Honda’s “Hate Something” and “Cog” did that. Janet Champ’s Nike copy moved me almost as much as an orphan in a Dickens novel. “Think different” did no less than ennoble creativity.

         If we hire the right talent, art directors and designers who need to imbue their work with art and copywriters who need to raise their work with poetry, people who want to make a difference while making commerce, those people will go beyond the deliverables. If creative directors give them permission to create big and think well of the world and push the virtues that they’ve always believed in, they will surprise us. While pursuing business objectives, they will surprise us. They will surprise themselves. Time and time again, advertising has surprised us by squeaking in higher motives and values. “We Try Harder,” “Live Richly,” the red and white Economist ads, that’s what they did for us. 

         I never expected that all work could become great, or even that all our day-to-day blocking and tackling shouldn’t be necessary, but I always had hope to create something more than advertising. I never gave up hope for that. I would study every award book, looking to burn with amazement and desire and envy. Do people still do that? Every week?

         Look, the ceiling is moveable and it only remains high if we keep pushing against it, otherwise it slowly settles. We have to keep an eye on our standards. Don’t compare your work to other work in that medium; compare it to something that once blew you away. Do that, and keep on doing that, and it becomes increasingly harder to live without the masterpiece.