Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Advertising age


Like all underground transportation systems in the world, the French metro makes ends meet by selling advertising space. This, since... 1947 (and a little before too)! Generally rented by the week, this space has seen thousands of ad campaigns since then! One artist - Pierre-François Grimaldi - had the idea of turning them into real pictures. Some of them can currently be seen at Galerie W, near Montmartre. Quite clever - and interesting for "old" Parisians like me who may remember some of these campaigns! 

12 comments:

  1. Great photo, creepy story. I, somehow, hadn't heard about this.

    Yikes!

    -buzzgirl

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  2. Of course that comment was supposed to be for yesterday's photo...oops.

    -buzzgirl

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  3. This is a great idea. When I first started going to Paris, I would take a lot of photos of the giant ads in the metro station because many were so clever and different from advertising in the U.S. Over the past decade though, it seems like the ads are more "globalized" and not as special as they used to be. Maybe it's just been bad luck.

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  4. Great picture and post again :)

    I agree with you about that Monnica. I first came to Paris in 2001 and noticed how diverse the advertising was in comparison to other places I had traveled to.

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  5. great post and photo,I love your blog!!

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  6. They are quite bright and eye-catching, aren't they? What unique advertisements. Thanks for sharing!

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  7. Great idea! I love old advertisements. Ads framed for art! Very clever.

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  8. I just don't get it. "Art" from "Advertising" = "Advertising"

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  9. Excellent point, M Royce. Let us also remember Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup can paintings and cardboard boxes painted to imitate Brillo scrub pad boxes. Is that art or advertising? Both? And whatever the answer, does that affect how you understand, absorb, or otherwise deal with it? (I won't even raise the question of pee in a jar and how to absorb that!)

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  10. You crack me up Jeff...only you would bring up pee in a jar and I don't even know what you're talking about. Do doctors now call that art or are they advertising. LOL

    Nice shot Eric.

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  11. @Rob "I just don't get it. "Art" from "Advertising" = "Advertising"" Well, you don't really see the products they are advertising for in these pictures, so is it really still advertising?

    @Buzz Girl. LOL I was really wondering why you'd call this a creepy story! Then I realized...

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  12. Michael: While medicine is referred to as both an art and science, that's not what I was thinking of. Remember the submerged religious icon work by Andres Serrano from 1987?

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