** TO BE CONDUCTED VIA ZOOM TELECONFERENCE. WRITE TO VSRI@USC.EDU TO JOIN THE DISCUSSION **

Selling the Story: Commercial Pictures and Visual Persuasion

VISS 599 Seminar Visit: Container Corporation’s Art Direction 

Wednesday, April 1

2:00-3:30pm

SOS 250

Alex J. Taylor, Assistant Professor and Academic Curator, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh

Under the leadership of Walter Paepcke, Chicago-based packaging manufacturer Container Corporation of America was a pioneer among company’s using art in advertising as a prestige marketing strategy in in the 1940s and 1950s. This paper turns to the company’s art patronage after Paepcke’s death in 1960, exploring how pop artists helped Container Corporation pursue a new, more sales-focused direction, and help combat mounting criticisms over the material waste and deceptive practices of supermarket packaging.

Image credit: Andy Warhol, Corporate Trade Ad, 1963, screenprint on canvas mounted on paperboard mounted on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Container Corporation of America, 1984.124.303