One of my favourite Twitter accounts is called @PerfumeAdsForSale which as the name might suggest, writes perfume ads for sale in tweet form. They are supposed to be parody ads but honestly, they hit pretty close to reality. They make no sense and look like they’d cost a fortune to make.
This is a pretty good example - I mean, how exactly does one embody the emotion of sandalwood?
Ads for luxury items like perfume, wine and cars are a funny one. It seems as long as you show the product and make it look good, you don’t need a reason for anything that happens. They actually remind me of the Vanitas genre of painting, which I know sounds like a leap, but let me explain.
Vanitas paintings were a type of still life painting that became popular in the Netherlands in the 17th century. They contain collections of objects that are meant to remind viewers of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. Cheery, I know. Skulls were a main feature of these paintings but typically you’d also have rotten fruit, flowers, butterflies, jewellery and silks, clocks or hourglasses. Ultimately though, they really provided artists at the time with a moral excuse to paint attractive objects. Which brings me back to perfume ads. They serve as contemporary Vanitas, shiny products carefully arranged but with no real meaning. Of course, the irony is that Versace actually have a perfume called Vanitas, which I’m sure someone got paid a lot of money to advertise.
Writing about this actually also reminded me of a series that I loved by the artist Jeanette May. Exploring the idea of the anxiety around technological obsolescence, she photographed a whole series of ‘Tech Vanitas’ substituting skulls for out-of-date tech and computers. While advertising urges us to upgrade and update, she says, ‘Cutting-edge technology becomes outdated, embarrassing, quaint, collectible, and finally, antiquated or forgotten. Perhaps more than death, we fear becoming Luddites.’
But maybe that rush to upgrade and adapt is understandable. Just look around at how technology has helped us cope over the last year and stay connected while staying apart. It got me thinking about what a Vanitas would look like in the time of Covid – a CoVanitas if you will (what? I like a pun). The skull was a given, but a mask waits nearby for safety. I’ve also included the mainstays of my work from home situation, multiple screens, the ubiquitous teams meeting, coffee, hand sanitiser, soap, and the banana I never quite get around to eating. And of course wine - as I like to say, ‘In Vino Vanitas’.
