“Vulgarity’s Vain and Smug Invention”: New York, the Aesthetics of Advertising, and Consumer Society in the Work of Joaquín Torres-García (1920-21)

Summary

In his essay New York (1920-30), the Uruguayan painter Joaquín Torres-García analyzes the tight connection between advertising industry and the spiritual vulgarity of consumer society. Despite his enthusiasm far the visual aesthetics of advertisement, Torres-García denounces how the materialist logic that operates at the heart of advertising results in a vulgarization of capitalist societies. The advertising industry aspires to disciplining subjectivities and transforming individuals into an anonymous mass. This is achieved through discursive strategies based on psychological manipulation that banalize human affectivity by transforming it into a commodity.