Art & Pub

Andy Warhol drew a pair of golden clippers, Salvador Dalí the logo of the Chupa Chups lollipops, and before them, John Everett Millais had accepted in 1886 to see one of his paintings - a child blowing bubbles - be used by the makers of Pears soap. The relation between artists and advertising goes far back, and as this book shows, is double binding. On the one hand marketing uses art to sell – Nestlé took over Vermeer’s Milk maid for there yoghurts and Manpower uses Leonardo’s Vitruvian man. And these loans continue with Arcimboldo on the Malibu liqueur to Michel Angelo’s David for Levi’s jeans. What would the artists themselves have thought of this? In the other sense, since Braque and Picasso included Pernod and the Kub instant broth in their paintings, artists continue to distort the meaning of the symbols of consumer society. Barbara Kruger, Erró, Wim Delvoye and Ai Weiwei (with his Chinese jug with Coca-Cola stamped on it) are just some of the party poopers.

• Art & Pub, by Mélanie Gentil, published by Palette, 2015, €24.50