In "Sportin' Waves," there's a hair's breadth of difference between art and advertisement.
by Noah Berlatsky
In Gwyneth Jones's sci-fi novel Phoenix Cafe, set in a distant future, the protagonists visit a museum in which remnants of 20th-century advertising, including a Coke bottle, are displayed for aesthetic contemplation. The difference between advertising and art has been reduced to a matter of context—a function of how you look at it as much as what it is. Likewise "Sportin' Waves," an exhibit of hand-painted Ghanaian barbershop and salon signage from the 90s to the present organized by collector Brian Chankin, is hung in the Strange Beauty Show hair salon, reminding us how arbitrary the category of art can be.…[ Read more ]