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Comment by antonyt | Hacker News Reader

I hate ads, but I'm struggling to understand how something being an ad disqualifies it from being art. Advertising is a creative human endeavor. Ads are designed to make you feel something, just like art.

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> Ads are designed to make you feel something, just like art.

Tear gas is designed to make you feel something.

At their core, their for commercial/promotional purposes. Ads are inherently meant to drive consumerism, where as art is not.

Some ads clearly are art. Speaking of Apple, their 1984 ad was very much a work of art. Things can have more than one meaning and purpose.

The romantic ideal is that art is not about consumption, but the reality, both historically and currently, is that art objects are by and large made to be bought and sold. If you disqualify all works meant for consumption, you would have very little left that we currently recognize as art.

> romantic ideal is that art is not about consumption

I believe this comes from the Church having been a major sponsor of art in the West for centuries.

Citation needed. In my experience, most artists create to satisfy the inner urge and then hope to sell it.

> you would have very little left that we currently recognize as art.

What's the problem with that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_art

There are a long list of arts with adjectives in front of them. commercial art, applied art, fine art, etc...they aren't art just because you have co-opted art to mean only fine art. Also see:

https://miguelcamarena.com/blogs/news/fine-art-vs-commercial...

Plenty of artists make art for commercial purposes. In fact, that's kind of the dividing line between "professional" and "amateur" artist.

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