Billboards: Menace to society or public art?

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Hot Wheels Billboard - Public art....or menace? | Photo 02

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  Practically everybody hates billboards. Usually accused of distracting drivers already harried from eating, drinking, applying makeup and fiddling with the radio/Nav/temp knobs (but thankfully not texting because THAT might actually cause an accident) billboards are branded a safety hazard. More often though folks simply tag billboards as objectively horrific blights on an otherwise pristine landscape - tactless, uninspired visual garbage that does little more than pollute our shared space. And that means the only thing conceivably worse than the billboards themselves would have to be the owners who erect them. Evil personified, these landscape despoiling money-lusters clearly care little for the saintly tree they shadow in service of some 30 foot wide phallus promising an end to erectile dysfunction. They’re in it for the cash, which (as we all know) makes such folks pretty bad dudes - unless of course they happen to be “indigenous peoples” who thus far have remained pretty much stigma-free when it comes to doing whatever the heck they want to do on “their land.” On “our land” we are free to pretty much suck it. No, with few exceptions everybody hates billboards and their owners. Everybody but me. I love them.  

God help me, but I really, really do love billboards. To me, there remains something inherently beautiful about a massive rectangular shout-out erected for the sole purpose of catching my attention at 80mph.  It’s a massive example of humanity’s need for attention and to be heard. We all want to be noticed, and regarded, as individuals and for what we do. Billboards are one of humanity’s best creations of semi-permanent reminders that the Earth we inhabit is populated by people who could not be more different if they tried.

A good billboard demands so much skill and effort. You can’t say too much or elaborate too little. Any message, to be effective, must hit instantly. You only get one, maybe two glances before it’s gone. How do you make something that resonates? How do you make something that stays with you even after speeding by? And what kind of message demands you find an off-ramp for the sole purpose of circling around again for a second look? The perfection that is attained every now and again makes the painful billboard mistakes we endure more than worth the effort.

Hot Wheels blew my mind thanks to a recent billboard of theirs. Driving down a busy road you look up to catch sight of that most famous of die-cast toy car company logos just below a massively gargantuan head and shoulders cut out of a young boy looking down at the street full of traffic. His eyes are wide in appreciation of the huge volume and infinite choices presented by the “toy cars” arrayed below him. It’s only a billboard but without saying anything it manages to speak volumes. Both whimsical and self-aware, the Hot Wheels billboard genuflects to the world as we know it and yet still manages to lift us above it at the same time too – all while selling cars too. It says everything without printing a word, commenting on the traffic we hate and reminding us of the selves we once were. Young, hopeful and wide-eyed with excitement at joining the grown-up rat race we now despise. It’s beautiful, in my opinion, and in the ways that matter most I actually consider this billboard somewhat akin to public art.

Proponents of public art argue that we need public art because it improves our quality of life, because it makes us stop and open our eyes. I could not agree more. We do have a need for beauty, for relief from the everyday drudgery we so easily fall into and public art often has the ability to shake us from these modern trances. But when you figure the installation of public art might suffer in these economically challenged times as cities look to balance budgets maybe it’s up to folks like Mattel and Hot Wheels to provide the service instead. Sure it’s just an ad but there is no reason a well-executed billboard cannot lift our hearts, challenge our beliefs or just stop us in our tracks and make us think. Everything around us is part of the conversation.

Whenever I visit Los Angeles one of my favourite rituals is to drive the Sunset Strip through Hollywood to experience the full-frontal attack of the larger than life billboards that help make the drive so famous. Cruising the Sunset corridor anew, and taking in the latest promos always makes me smile and dream as much as anything I’ve ever seen at the Guggenheim or the Tate. Is advertising crass and obnoxious? It can be – but so too can art. And when it comes down to it, isn’t that the point? The world that surrounds us is artistic wherever we look – even in its ugliness. The only requirement is that you take the time to stop and really see it. It may only be a billboard at first, but next time look a little harder. It might become something much more.