Edible Cogitations: Airbrush Ads

bring back this vibe

Aug 5, 2022

Snaxshot is a newsletter on upcoming food and beverage trends that offers a curation of brands and aesthetics written by Andrea Hernández.

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Golden Era of Ads

Happy Friday, welcome back to edible cogitations. Today’s pressing issue, whatever happened to airbrush advertising? Originating in the late 19th century, the airbrush spray gun was widely used in the mid-20th century as a photo retouch tool in advertising, while in the 1930s-40s it was most commonly used in movie posters, its popularity began declining in the 1950s except for the popular pinup posters. The 60s saw a resurgence. in interest and airbrush began to be used again in Rock ’n’ Roll posters and contributed to the era of photorealism, coined by American collector Louis K. Meisel in the 70s, spawning a variety of different articulations, such as “Super-Real, Sharp-Focus, Radical Real, Hyperreal (in France), Romantic Real and Magic Real.”

“Airbrush art produces a highly aestheticized, nostalgic art language that is curiously devoid of “genuine historicity” , and, at the same time, uses this method of pastiche in a manner that “subverts dominant discourses” by creatively merging of different artistic styles and popular culture elements in a way that challenges the once characteristic dichotomy between ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ culture (Jameson 17-19; Hutcheon 46)”

Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. Routledge, 1998.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Duke UP, 1991.

Andrea 👁️⃤ @iiiitsandrea

we need to bring this vibe back

However, it is until the late 1970s and early 1980s that airbrush aesthetics became a prominent, popular style, where it is woven along with the popular culture of the era. Its imagery consisted primarily of variations on different themes: female portraits, tropical landscapes, cars, fruits, various consumer goods, and architectural interior design. The “LA scene,” art deco of Miami, tropicalism all inspired airbrush art through incredible illustrations. Using a variety of different representations, the 1980s airbrush art became the most known postmodern popular style of the decade, especially through advertising. Unfortunately the 1990s saw its decline, only to be rediscovered in the late 2000s, 1980s airbrush art resurged thanks to the Internet, as an escapist narrative at a time where doom lingers around every corner.

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Why is it that just the particular 1980s vibe has been resurrected? Perhaps is that it’s a sort of artifact, at a time of economic prosperity, Wall Street boom and yuppie opulence, consumer luxury and glamour, in the same way we might see that 40 years from now, Instagram posts in Amalfi may resurrect as “it” escapist vibes. Retrofuturism is just that, escapism in the form of art and illustrations, this type of airbrush art in particular necessitates a sort of craftsmanship that has long been lost post digital era.

To honor this beautiful capsule in time, we’ve compiled some of our favorite pieces from the past, while also sharing artists who are bringing this back, working with modern brands.