Recently, I was having lunch with David Abbott and he was telling me about Bill Bernbach. David had worked for Bernbach, and he’d met him many times. I’d hadn’t done either. So I loved to hear the stories.
I trained in New York, when advertising was split between Bernbach or Ogilvy. You either followed one or the other.
To the younger generation, Bernbach was a revolutionary, and Ogilvy a dinosaur. Ogilvy represented everything you see in Mad Men.
Typical Ogilvy ads featured white, middle-class families, in suburbia with 2.2 children, enjoying a martini, living perfect lives. Sort of like ‘Stepford Wives’. Selling you the dream you ought to want.
Typical Bernbach ads featured Jews, Irish, Black, Chinese, working-class, old or funny-looking people, living real lives.
Ogilvy ads were what all ads had been to that point: didactic. Bernbach ads were what no ads had been before: funny, charming, witty.
Ogilvy talked down to people. Bernbach talked up to people.
I said to David, it reminded me of a line by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. “All philosophy is basically footnotes to Plato.” That included Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, everyone.
Plato made the revolution, they just followed in his footsteps. And repeated and refined his lessons.
I said, for us that could read, “All advertising is basically footnotes to Bernbach,” David Abbott said, “That’s probably right.”
And remember he worked for, and knew, Ogilvy and Bernbach.
For my generation Bernbach was the man who invented good advertising. He made the revolution.
The best of everything since has been rediscovering and refining his lessons.
I was reminded of this recently at Tate Modern. There’s a huge new show of Pop Art. Everything from the sixties to the modern day.
And there you very clearly see, “All Modern Art is basically footnotes to Andy Warhol.”
I’d never really noticed before that all Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst have done is repeat and refine Warhol’s lessons.
Before Warhol, modern art was just men in sandals and beards. Men who plastered oil-paint onto the canvas with a trowel, and the messier the better.
The dollops of brown paint on Frank Auerbach’s pictures, for instance, are so thick the canvases have to be laid on their back when they’re not on show. Otherwise gravity will cause the massive weight of paint to droop down.
Art was visceral.
Warhol was the exact opposite. He used flat, glossy, acrylic paint. Plastic and fast drying.
Or spray paint and masking tape, for perfectly straight edges.
Warhol’s art became about manipulating images, not about artistic skill.
Previously, if you wanted silver, you juxtaposed black and white brush –strokes, so they shimmered between the canvas and the viewer. Warhol used a spray can of silver paint.
His art was about mass production, not one-offs. The glossier and slicker, the more facile and cynical, the better.
As Warhol said, “Business is the new art.”
He was the exact opposite of the precious artist. He glorified in being a media whore. He repositioned the entire art establishment as pretentious, elitist, dinosaurs.
Shock art, Hype art, Film art, Video art, Boredom as art. You name it, Warhol started it.
Then I looked at Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. Everything they did was in glossy modern materials. Shiny, pretty plastics in bright colours. Spotless and garish.
Everything they did was either shocking, or decorative, or ironically boring. The juxtaposition of style and content was repeating and refining Warhol.
I hadn’t appreciated just how influential he was until this exhibition. And that made me think about other areas.
Whatever you’re into, you can probably find someone who was the watershed. Someone who made a revolution that sucked everyone else along in its wake.
In music, I’d say it was The Beatles.
In football, Ron Greenwood.
In film, Sergei Eisenstein.
In science, Isaac Newton.
In fiction writing, Raymond Chandler.
In product design, Christopher Dresser.
In animation, Max Fleischer.
In computers, Steve Jobs.
In comedy, The Marx Brothers.
In art, Marcel Duchamp. Try it yourself. Who are the people, for whom everyone else is just footnotes?
Indecision, me, or, my pal Kuma, no, wait a mo, it is me, after all, what a surprise.
Couple of art quickies, Dave:
The Guggenheim, Bilbao. Awesome outside, like a UFO landed on the banks of a river next to a former industrial city undergoing renewal and regeneration. When the late afternoon sun catches it... it's hard to describe its beauty.
Guernica, Sofia Reina Museum, Madrid. Again, thoroughly awesome to behold in the flesh, as it were.
Reminds me of Manhatten the very first time I saw it for real, lit up on the evening ride in from JFK.
Sent a frisson of excitement right thru me...
Seen it a thousand of times in photos and American TV series, but nothing quite prepares you for the reality.
how about Kraftwerk in music Dave? All UK 'synth pop' acts started with them. So did Electro, early hip hop (Planet Rock anyone?) Techno and early House and Drum and Bass. That's some legacy, several revolutions per decade.
I'd say in computers Rob Noyce was the watershed rather than Steve Jobs, in science Francis Bacon and in football there's only one Arsene Wenger
Music: Roger Waters
Football: Pele
Film: Stanley Kubrick
Science: Lev Vygotsky
Fiction: Bob Kane
Animation: Walt Disney
Comedy: Johnny Speight
Art: JMW Turner
Architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright
DIY: Block & Quail
Tea: Earl Grey
Design: Philippe Starck
Jesus Christ (Religion)
It's so hard to nail it down to one person.
Guys,
To be fair there's a difference between 'watersheds' and 'favourites'.
Some of these need further justification.
Arsene Wenger?
Turner?
Dave - i'm sorry but this is bollocks. I agree that every generation refines, modifies or adapts what came before but the idea that there are people, bands, artists or whoever else that come along and completley reinvent the wheel is just utter crap. you've accused those who made comments here as having favourites. you're guilty of fandom yourself. i mean, the beatles, come on. even they admit they owe a huge massive debt to american music. the idea that one person can invent a whole way of doing things is a myth. utter utter crap. and you really don't give oglivy his due. instead you've just undermined him with cheap racist slurs. he was a product of his time. same as you. same as bernach. everyone is a product of their time. no one is out of step with it.
and as a postscript it'ss bloody lazy and cliched to talk about greenwood. wenger is laughable. if you wanna cite a true football great in terms of managers bill nicholson was something else. he developed an entirely new and entertaining way of playing football. he was the link between hoofing it and passing triangles or push 'n' run as they called it. but even i wouldnt pretend he invented silky, flowing football
Media Village,
It’s all opinion.
But the fun, and learning, is in the debate.
Kevin said Disney for animation.
I say Disney got the rotoscoping for Snow White from Fleischer.
But it’s fair that Disney took everything to a new level.
Bill Nicholson was great manger.
But like Ogilvy, the last of the old breed.
Greenwood was the first of the new breed.
In science I say Newton.
But even Newton says he couldn’t have done it without Francis Bacon.
Kubrick is my favourite director by far.
But I don’t think he changed the course of film for those who came after.
In comedy I’d say the Marx Brothers influenced ITMA, which influenced Spike Milligan, who influenced Monty Python, etc.
But I can see an argument that Johnny Speight opened up politically incorrect comedy in the UK.
In art I know the argument that Turner was the first of the Impressionists.
But generally you’d have to say Cezanne was the father of modern art.
Like everything, it’s opinion, not fact.
The Wenger comment was mean to be more tongue in cheek. Saying that, he is a watershed at Arsenal...
Okay, for the sake of argument:-
Let's try it the other way round. To get to the facts, let's completely remove
"like" from the equasion by subject, person, place or thing, and look for facts:-
Music: Sex Pistols. First band to spit at their audience.
Football: Bradford FC. Revolutionising stadium safety worldwide.
Film: Hubble Telescope. World's First Digital Camera.
Science: Oppenheimer. The Atomic Bomb.
Art: Jackson Pollock. Swinging pots of paint on pendulums to make pictures.
Books: Charles Saatchi. First person to publish a book to shun publicity.
Transport: Sir Christopher Cockerell. Inventor of the Hovercraft.
Did they reinvent the wheel or did they change the world? It's a real conundrum. even though they are facts, it does not necessarily guarantee they will be liked,
and opinion does not have to be liked either, it's just an opinion.
I named a cat Puskas. Does that help?
I'm kinda siding with Media Village on this one.
Yes there are revolutions within different fields, but to say that one foreshadows all that comes thereafter it is to drastically oversimplify things.
Yes Newton caused us to look at things differently, but what about Einstein after him? What he had to say would constitute much more than a footnote and in fact directly contradict or subvert much of what Newton claimed.
And if we're really taking 'science' as a whole, then what about the Copernican revolution which flipped on it's head the Ptolemaic view that the Earth was the centre of the universe.
Yes there are radical paradigmatic shifts, but there are also subsets within each of those shifts.
We make progress in leaps, its just some make bigger leaps than others. They break the rule which allows dozens to follow, and feast on the smaller rules. Answer the subsequent questions.
Also, I have to pull you up on the slight misapplication of the Whitehead quote. His point was that we do not call an inquiry 'philosophical' unless it revolves around some of the distinctions which Plato drew i.e. between appearance-reality, matter-mind, made-found.
These metaphysical distinctions are ones he fatefully constructed, and philosophers have since spent years trying to reify.
If anything the quote constitutes a criticism of Plato's legacy rather than praise.
Many thinkers (Dewey, Derrida, Rorty etc.) now regard these as 'a brood and nest of dualisms', more hurtful than they are helpful. Maybe even constructions, or fictions. Ones which we must again learn to think beyond.
(PS. Household cleaning: Hoover or Dyson? Point in case)
The great thing about fact is: Fact is.
Opinion shifts.
The conundrum is this:-
Opinions can be built on facts.
EG: Dyson is better than Hoover because it's better than the original.
This is based on empirical evidence.
Factual demonstations of products tested at the same time will prove this.
However, can facts be built on opinions that will last the test of time?
EG: More people say X is better than Y therefore X wins.
EG: Hoover brings out a new product that's better than Dyson.
...and so we're back to opinion again.
Here's another one.
"I think therefore I am."
logic implies:
when I don't think I'm not,
.... but I still am.
My watershed moments:
Football. Puskas as part of the Hungary side that tore England to pieces.
Film. I'll go with Orson Welles who inspired the likes of Truffaut and Goddard.
Art. I'll go with the Impressionists, as a collective, that moved things on.
Science: I'll throw a curve ball in here and say the chip's original proposer Geoffrey Dummer.
Come on now folks.
I think we can all agree that the watershed moment in football was on May 16th 1987, when Keith Houchen met Dave Bennett's cross with a diving header that screamed past an astonished Ray Clemence and set the mighty Sky Blues on their way to an extra-time FA Cup win.
Yeah.
Can I get an Amen?
Anyone?
I think each of the greats we're talking about broke a rule. They went against a fundamental convention. They each have their Eureka moments:
Copernicus: What if the earth isn't the centre? What if it's the sun?
Duchamp: What if something ready-made, and presented as art could be art?
Bernbach: What if ads talk like we talk to each other? And they don't suck?
John Nash: What if Adam Smith was wrong and seeking self-interest isn't always the most beneficial tactic?
Dyson: What if a vacuum cleaner doesn't have to have a bag?
They see things differently, then they change things forever.
That doesn't mean that everything that comes after is a footnote, mind.
Those who follow owe something to those who broke the rule, but the followers work isn't simply an attempt to better elaborate the distinctions the earlier thinkers dared make. In many cases, for example science, the new thinker takes the old thinker's discovery as a given, and sets to work on a whole new set of problems.
Those working on the LHC aren't really concerned with Newton's thoughts - theirs is an altogether different task.
In philosophy however, people like John Rawls are still trying to better define our notion of 'Justice' - one that Plato (or Socrates) first sketched out. That's what is meant by the Plato quote. It doesn't really apply equally to all fields.
But I'm just being pedantic.
Hey kevin,
I'm not really sure what your point is about the cogito.
Good to see the Whitehead reference. He is one of my favorites; did my senior thesis on him as a matter of interest to those who care. He’s a real “process” guy, like Hegel, or Heraclitus, (or Lao Tzu for that matter). You know, the “you can’t step in the same river twice” (Heraclitus) kind of guys. To which one of his students supposedly replied, “Master, can you step in the same river once?”
Another famous Whitehead quote is that “European thought is littered with metaphysical systems”. On one hand, this is taken as representing a failed rationalistic scheme in the west, one that leaves conclusions abandoned and unreconciled. A more positive take on Whitehead’s thought here is that the western mind is relentless and progressive, and not willing to rest on past successes. Roger that.
As for watershed moments in civilization, I agree with some of the comments here that comparing Plato’s influence is rather a fool's task. For one thing, we rarely have someone who has logged 2500 years of influence; and for that matter it *does* take a few centuries to adequately judge a contribution to civilization. Who knows! It may be that ABBA has a more lasting influence than the Beatles over long spans of time. I doubt it. But just saying.
That said (and I do like this parlor game), I think we can be pretty sure that J.S. Bach is going to remain in the pantheon over long periods of time. Maybe Gödel in Mathematics (his 1930’s Incompleteness Theorem widely regarded as laying waste to much of the mathematics which preceded him, much like the debut of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring). Yeah; I am going to nominate Igor S. to the pantheon too! Igor, my man!
I’ll just end with one more Heraclitus quote: “Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.” Break down the barriers between work and play, that's my motto too.
Cheers,
mm
Hi Thomas,
Aren't we having fun with this blog!
Firstly "What if" is a supposition, and as a supposition is a projection of something that has not yet happened, it can't possibly be fact. It is only an opinion.
However, some opinions become fact because some people make the effort to investigate the potential of a supposition by making it real and, therefore a fact of sorts. "Why of sorts?" I hear you say.
Let's look at Cogito:
"I think therefore I am"
Up until now we have all believed this to be true.
If this is true, then the opposite should apply.
"I don't think, therefore I am not."
However, many people in this world don't think every day and they are still alive
to tell the story. EG: The person who crosses the road and gets hit by a car.
He didn't "think" at the time, but he was still alive at the time of the incident.
I broke into a TV programme last night mid way, where a German Neurophysiologist was examining the workings of the conscious brain of a fellow professor performing a simple task of squeezing a button. He discovered some information that terrified professor guinea pig.
His discovery:-
We think all our conscious thoughts six seconds before we know it.
The ramifications of this discover are enormous.
This means:
"I am before I think."
"I'm not before I don't think"
The fact is:-
I have to be alive to think but I don't have to think to be alive.
Where does that leave Cogito?
Well, it was only an opinion, but I guess it was a good one to last 2,500 years...
Kevin, Michael (mm), Thomas Heginbothem.
Great discussion guys, I've been really enjoying it.
I like the quality of the debate, proud to have it on the blog.
Check out this link.
It doesn't have any answers, but it oes open up the question a bit.
www.youtube.com/watch
Personally I think Dyson sucks.
Hey Kevin,
I've enjoyed it. Dave is great at opening cans of worms!
I think we were each arguing different points earlier.
Mine about the difference between a footnote and an altogether new venture. Yours about the difference between fact and opinion (a philosophical minefield thats probably far to big to tackle in a blog post, let alone a response).
I'm sure you're aware that the phrase 'I think therefore I am' was coined by Descartes so isn't strictly 2,500 years old. But dates aside, the context of his original claim 'I am, I exist' in Meditations is important and warrants a thorough reading. If you fully grasp his evil daemon argument, you'd probably be inclined to agree that 'not thinking before you get hit cross the road', doesn't really constitute a refutation of his claim.
More substantial refutations have been launched, however, from the likes of Nietzsche, Lacan, Baudrillard etc. and you're right in saying that the cogito is now widely held to be flawed.
John, I'm shocked. Dyson is one of my heroes.
He could have rested on his laurels after getting rich off of the bag-less vacuum cleaner. Instead he went on to develop the Ball Technology, and the Airblade Hand-dryer! That, or he got one of his lackey's to do it.
Either way, I think he's an admirable chap.
I've heard 'Cogito ergo sum' should be translated as 'I doubt, therefore I am'.
If this is true, it sounds more like scepticism than rationalism.
Also, Descartes 'evil demon' could parallel what is called 'mind' in Zen Buddhism.
Also, consider the 'common sense' approach.
When asked what he thought of Berekeley's immaterialism 'Esse est percipi' Dr Johnson kicked a stone and said "I refute him thus".
Sorry Thomas
I was just 'playing' on the predominant vacuuming action: sucking.
Having said that I'm not happy with the airblade hand-dryer.
How the hell are your supposed to dry your pits a la madonna in 'Desperately Seeking Susan'?!
And heaven help us if we had any mishap like Mr Bean!! www.youtube.com/watch
God. Can't believe I missed the dyson-sucking pun.
Don't sweat it Thomas
Sometimes we get so involved that we can't see the wood for the trees.
Hi Dave,
Just seen the link you sent on Jill Bolte Taylor. Makes me wonder if the symptoms of a Stroke are what a schizophrenic endures every day.
It makes having a Stroke sound like fun.
I better go and sign up for Fit for Life.
That should finish me off!
Dave, Everyone, Very enjoyable post. On footnotes, I have to say, "...on the shoulders of giants...", before Kraftwerk there was BBC Radiophonic workshop (Dr Who Theme among others) plus Walter Carlos 'Switched on Bach', even Rolf Harris's Stylophone (Bowie's 'Space Oddity'), on the subject of thinking and not thinking...when is a thought not a thought? When is brain activity which is accompanied by images, sounds, feelings 'in our heads' not thought? Is it just that we can't articulate that state? From my perspective, 'not thinking' is simply a state of thinking about something else. Surely that's misdirected cognizance? There's still thinking going on somewhere in there. Although, from the vapid look on her face, the redhead in Girls Aloud might be the exception.
Dave Trott
Blogging for:
Member since: 08 Aug 2008
Last login: 23 Nov 2009
Total Posts: 253
