Silvabrand | Art for Branding's Sake
Silva Brand

Art for Branding's Sake

Aug 26, 2022 | by Team Silva
3 min
Louis Vuitton x Jeff Koons - The Masters collection

We’ve all heard the cliché about starving artists toiling away in obscurity and poverty. What’s not known is how much of an aberration this is, especially in times past. The Atlantic writes that “the speculative art model, in which the lone genius creates a painting in her studio and later seeks a buyer, has existed for scarcely more than a hundred years.” Before that, artists depended on patrons to support their creative endeavors.

“Historically, people in positions of power like kings and queens funded all types of visual artists to outfit their homes, cities, and important buildings like churches and town halls,” writes Artwork Archive. “If you were an artist and had a powerful patron, your financial security was all but guaranteed.”

While royal benefactors may be a thing of the past, both established and emerging artists can look to brands to make their aesthetic ambitions possible. According to Tatler, “Companies are looking for new ways to cut through the noise and build their image. By working with artists, brands gain a certain intellectual and creative cachet, while artists reap financial and often logistical support, not to mention increasing the value of their work.” Here’s a look at three major companies that are collaborating with artists in ways that reconfigure branding and beauty.

Ultra-posh fashion brand Louis Vuitton enlisted contemporary artist Jeff Koons to make some bold cultural commentary using Vuitton’s accessories. In 2017, artnet news wrote that Koons “used his 2015 Gazing Ball series as the jumping off point for a line of handbags and other small leather goods emblazoned with great works of Old Masters art.” True to its name, Masters displays art created by some of the most-renowned painters in the Western canon. “The collection comprises five of the most famous paintings in history,” according to The New York Times, “including [Da Vinci’s] Mona Lisa, Van Gogh’s Wheat Field With Cypresses and Rubens’s The Tiger Hunt.”

The nod to past greats is characteristic of Koons and his aesthetic. As Elle India writes, “Koons has often started by appropriating icons in both popular culture and art history, before transforming them into works of art for their time. Masters is no exception.” Although Koons uses classic art in Masters, his partnership with Louis Vuitton is unlike anything the fashion brand has done before. “This is the first time the brand has ever allowed an artist to rework their famous monogram print,” Verdict notes.

The groundbreaking venture serves patron and artist well; Louis Vuitton gets to associate its brand with legendary creative geniuses, and Koons gets to express his views on art through the storied company’s products. The New York Times writes that Koons “wants to eradicate the elitism of the art world. He says he doesn’t see any distinction between the bags and his art because his definition of art is something that ‘connects in a profound way to the universal.’”

Although Jeff Koons’ Masters is the first project of its kind for Louis Vuitton, it’s hardly the first time an artist has gone to work for a major brand. Consider the famed BMW Art Cars. “In 1975, American artist Alexander Calder listened to Hervé Poulain, a French racing driver, and auctioneer, and went on to paint a BMW race car. That action is today identified as the start of the BMW Art Car movement,” Hot Cars writes. “Tens of brilliant artists have applied their unique art styles to different BMW cars.” And the artist is firmly in the proverbial driver’s seat when they get the opportunity to stylize BMW’s cars. As BMW says, “[T]he principle is simple: a well-known artist designs a BMW race car (later also series production cars) based on their own ideas!”

In 2016, artist John Baldessari took full advantage of that freedom. According to BMW Group[LHS1] , “As a committed minimalist, he worked with the colors red, yellow, blue and green and with his monochrome dots, he left his familiar colorful marks on the M6 GTLM as well.”

“Unveiled at Art Basel in Miami in November, it was tearing up the track in Daytona in January,” CBS News writes. “As BMW Motorsport’s director put it, ‘On the outside, it’s really a piece of art. But on the inside it’s a race car. It wants to go out today, and it wants to battle, and wants to win.’”

While bottled water is certainly less high end than Louis Vuitton bags and BMW race cars, beverage giant PepsiCo has proven that it can be just as artful. “PepsiCo has introduced a premium bottled water brand featuring packaging that is more central to the brand than the product itself,” Packaging World wrote in 2017. “LIFEWTR, a purified water pH-balanced with electrolytes, is packaged in a sleek PET bottle in two sizes decorated with labels that feature the work of emerging artists involved in mediums such as graphic design, street art, and photography.”

PepsiCo executives see these bottles as opportunities for the mass public to appreciate art. As Brad Jakeman, president of PepsiCo’s global beverage group, told The Daily Front Row, “A huge movement in art now is about democratizing art, and what better way to give art accessibility than a nationally distributed canvas that’s in millions of people’s homes around the world?” But PepsiCo isn’t just making art accessible for the sake of it; the bottles’ unique designs help bring attention to art-related issues. Communication Arts writes, “Since its inception, LIFEWTR bottles have featured the works of more than 20 diverse artists spanning seven series, including Public Art, Women in Art, Emerging Fashion Designers, Arts in Education, Art Beyond Borders, Diversity in Design and Art through Technology.” These explorations of cultural issues give artists the chance to display their talent and push the boundaries of what society expects of art.

Louis Vuitton, BMW and PepsiCo prove that art and business do mix, but there are certain conditions that stakeholders need to be mindful of. As marketing executive Brett Hyman writes, “Artists have always answered to patrons in one form or another — the only difference is that corporations are now actively engaging in the artist-patron relationship more than they ever have before.”