Mixed Spaces of Museums and Stores:

Chapter 1: Art Spaces and Commercial Spaces 

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In this chapter, the growing tendency of art and commercial spaces acting as a fusion will be discussed in detail. Normally, when people try to differentiate between art space and commercial space, what they are built for plays a crucial part in helping us with the categorisation. It was commonly understood they each represents a distinct area of spatial design, that the two types of space exist and serve fairly different purposes. For example, we see museums and department stores as two very different venues to spend our days, one for an experience of edification, the other for splashing out to ‘treat’ ourselves; the same applies to our expectations of the items we see and their layouts. A progress that is not yet fully acknowledged by the public is the blurred line between commercial and educational spaces. Perhaps a better way to put it is that there was never meant to be a defined distinction between each type of spatial design, if we look closely to more recent designed spaces, we might spot more shared features than differences. As Maria Slowinska mentioned in The Convergence of Art and Marketing in Contemporary Culture: ‘both were modern capitalist institutions created for visual pleasure’, and ‘both presentational spaces developed in the late 19th century and reached their apex around the turn of the century’. 

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Collisions happen in various dimensions through spatial design. For ease of discussion, I split them into three parts, the commercial brands’ exhibition in traditional art spaces, embedded artistic elements in commercial environments, and art spaces for edification owned and controlled by commercial brands. To be more specific, with different environments and culture references, visitors hold different expectations before entering a venue, which leads to a diverted focus for their experience. For instance, edification spaces sponsored by commercial brands are less common as they are found to be more controversial and usually not well accepted by visitors. An analysis of such a case will be presented in Chapter 3. 

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Due to the differentiating expectations from audiences of what they are entering to experience, collaborators have a chance to come with something that is unexpected, therefore outperforming traditional mono-designed spaces. Mixed spaces exist for artists and commercial brands to complement the opponents. In different cases, each party of collaborators holds varied advantages, and consequently requires the other party to be able to bring in qualities they lack, in order to produce an effective outcome. In the following parts, representative collaborations will be discussed in detail to establish a clear explanation of what was achieved through mixed spaces. 

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 -- Setting Branding Spaces Inside Traditional Educational Places

Try picturing a sign shown at the entrance of a museum stating that the exhibition contains commercial contents: one could imagine how controversial it might be, as many would perceive it to be a contamination of an educational space. Based on the likelihood of presumption from the audience, setting branding spaces in traditional educational venues was found to be more challenging. 

 

The first example shown is a designer exhibition of a luxury brand held at a traditional edification space, Christian Dior, in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The BBC reviewed it to be 'a fantastic show that builds from a modest scrapbook of family photos at the beginning to a climatic end with over 70 years of creative excellence displayed in the round'. Curator Oriole Cullen has successfully created an immersive experience in which the perspectives shine through. As one of the most prominent displays of fashion housework is shown, the work languishes in the romantic femininity that Christian Dior championed. Not only does the exhibition bring the audience into the all-pervasive side of Christian Dior, but it also provides the socio-political context of Dior's style; his success, challenge, dreams as a designer, and how he challenged the authorities. As the review from the BBC stated, 'a couple of display cases of some nice dresses will not cut the mustard nowadays'. All contents were selected by a team of professionals after critically judged by the immersive factors of each garment and display. Since it was founded in 1946, Dior has always been a symbolic brand of luxury and elegance. As the most influential fashion designer of the 1940s and 50s, Dior's significant influence on the fashion world after the Second World War has continued until now with the gorgeous silhouette of his voluptuous New Look. He was so famous in France at the time that it seemed as if he was not only a man but rather an institution. The brand itself has numerous influence on the fashion field and outstanding recognition, and the primary purpose of the exhibition was to generate its identity. The exhibition reflects the designer's charm through storytelling, to enable audiences to bring it to life. It is worth mentioning that the Irish curator Oriole Cullen is employed by the V&A museum directly. Therefore, the content and art pieces presented in the exhibition do not involve the commercial benefits of the brand but focus more on educational knowledge such as clothing art and culture, especially highlighting the tied relationship between Christian Dior and British culture. For example, the most impressive piece is the asymmetric tulle gown Dior created for Princess Margaret’s 21st birthday celebrations in 1951, when the piece helped to boost her reputation as a style icon (Scarlett, 2019). The design and delicate curiosities are a microcosm of an era, not just a cloth being formed by textiles, but emphasising the emotional stories and culture they carry. As the first fashion exhibition to be staged in a museum, ‘Christian Dior’ broke the V&A's attendance record, attracting almost 595,000 people in seven months (BBC, 2019). The exhibition has an entrance fee, so the audiences had already been filtered through the processes of decision-making and ticket-purchasing; they were thus more willing to receive the content of the brand through the experience: to re-understand the Dior brand from all perspectives. 

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  -- The Educational Spaces Owned by Brands

The other typical space is art space owned by commercial brands, which means that commercial brands have complete rights on edification spaces. For instance, the famous Louis Vuitton Foundation is a fine-art museum that owns a large number of contemporary and modern art pieces, including paintings, sculptures, and site-specific installations. The artworks exhibited there are all from the most famous temporary artists, including Gilbert & George, Jeff Koons, and Olafur Eliasson. Although the museum named the same as the brand, the entire pavilion does not exhibit any brand-related content. It is a legally separate, nonprofit entity as part of LVMH's promotion of art and culture. Privately funded by Bernard Arnault, who is the head of LVMH's luxury brand empire and a billionaire art collector, this giant display cabinet reflects his huge collection of modern and contemporary art, as well as a corporate cultural stage. According to statistics, the museum cost more than €800 million to construct, which is seen as an art piece itself. The concept of it is 'a magnificent vessel for Paris that symbolises France's profound cultural vocation'. Undoubtedly, LVMH's influence is significant as it owns almost all the top luxury brands. Nevertheless, their official website indicates that this heavily invested-in art museum ‘has no direct benefits to the brand, only for adding artistic and cultural characteristics and signs to the brand’ (FLV, 2018). However, the announcement has been subject to outside controversy, which involves many parties: the investors, invisible consumption, and the long-term benefits brought by brand image, etc. A detailed analysis will be presented in Chapter 2, addressing the impact and complex connection between business and art in collision.  

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No matter what, the significance of art exhibitions and the commercial benefits they bring about relates to establishing a cultural image for the brand, contributing to the presentation and selection of artwork to a large extent. It is undeniable that compared with Dior’s personalised exhibition in traditional art museums, LVMH had more control and interference in the art space. More clearly, this amounted to thorough control. Unlike Dior's exhibition, the curatorial team of the lv foundation is directly employed by the brand itself. The artworks exhibited in the pavilion are carefully selected and arranged by this specific team, who work on the scientific analysis of the relationship between the chosen art pieces and the spirit that represents Louis Vuitton. All of them are high-priced modern artworks which have an avant-garde and rebellious element. Based on them, the Louis Vuitton Foundation aimed to create a fun and memorable experience for audiences, exactly the same as with their products. In this case, the brand side influenced impact, and it was necessary to establish the brand's identity and appeal in order to achieve a long-term ideal brand image building. As Maria said (2014), ‘Unlike the brand image building of the 1990s, brand owners and capitalists are increasingly trying to move the connection between art and goods out of the symbolic realm but to become a living reality that exists in the real world’. When LV was no longer satisfied with the use of artistic symbolic prints and art photography in commercials, they began to build a giant real art museum in the real world. People will spend more time and energy on this realistic connection between brand and art, and everything in this way becomes more authentic. The large and real splendid art palace deepened LMVH’s brand recognition, and made them appear more avant-garde, active, aesthetic and luxurious, by which the exhibited artists also enhanced their reputation and appeals.  

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  -- Holding Exhibitions In Commercial Spaces

Exhibitions in the commercial space range take on different types and forms, which is more in quantity, more mature and popular than the last type. The most common retail store’s window is a small exhibiting space and a larger-scale design week show space is just a trade show yet organized into different sections as a bigger exhibition. Its popularity can be attributed to the public’s high acceptance of exhibition spaces and the aesthetic requirements and pursuits of design brands.  

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One typical example is the ’Flipside’, a multi-sensory exhibition exhibited by Selfridges aimed to deliver a conceptualized view of radical luxury. The exhibition explored altered states of future luxury and took visitors on a journey through a series of installations created by artists for multiple luxury brands, such as Loewe or Louis Vuitton. The contrast between the raw concrete of the original interior architecture, and the gloss of reflected lights against a dark background created drama and a perfect stage for luxury. The attention to detail, exclusive space and sometimes lavish designs suggested a desire to make the experience of the exhibition in itself a form of luxury (Mace,2019). In Charles Rice’s book The Emergence of the Interior: Architecture, Modernity, Domesticity, he gave the notion of experiential duality: Long experiences develop over time, they are linked to continuity and therefore they may allow us to feel grounded; Instantaneous experiences are dynamic, possibly ephemeral. ‘Flipside’ delivered audiences the brand’s identity with sensuous pleasure, through a short-lived experience. In this exhibition, commerce chose to ‘borrow’ art to emphasise short-term experiences. This artistic world created by artists and curatorial teams enables audiences to immerse themselves in the brand experience, which is different from their daily life. The immersive sensory experience deepened the brand’s instant explosive appeal. Besides, each exhibition device endowed visitors with different sensory forms and feelings, exactly highlighting the characteristics of the brand. On the other hand, artists’ distinct artworks also received more attention and improved their influence by virtue of the commercial platform.  

 

Since Selfridges was established in 1909, Selfridges’s founder Harry Gordon Selfridge kept trying to provide women with a public space in which they could be comfortable and legitimately indulge themselves. He believed that shopping should be a fun adventure, which is clearly reflected in his distinctive design of the shopping mall, and the collaboration with art elements and educational knowledge. In the early stages, Selfridge attracted shoppers with educational and scientific exhibits, he believed that ‘the displays would introduce potential new customers to Selfridges and thus generate both immediate and long-term sales’ (Erika, 2001). Mr Selfridges’s avant-garde and artistry was also reflected in the window, who believed that going to the mall and going to the theatre were similar experiences. The store showcases hung up a silk curtain and would not unveil it until opening day or new product release. Just like today, showcase design seems like a prologue in Selfridge to experiencing the entire process, and supports to draw public attention, converting potential customers into real shoppers. And artistic elements are the best attractions to stretch people’s imagination. In recent decades, they collaborated with a large number of temporary artists such as Yayoi Kusama and Barbara Kruger 

(Selfridges&Co, 2019). Selfridges has established itself as an open space where people can explore culture and thought-provoking ideas. This is an aesthetic experience centre, just like a museum.  

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The examples listed above are the three of the most typical and common mixed spaces. They look similar but contain different characteristics, which are mainly reflected in the different operation forms, different delivery approaches and benefit purposes. Yet in general, the final aims of such collaboration can be categorized into three elements: Influence, perspective and identity. The constructed and real blended spaces have already verified the brands’ capital power and impacts. The brands call for deepening its impressions on audiences by the appeal and peculiarities brought by art. Through this, the value of artists naturally increases, whose influences and audience scope will be enlarged relying on the brands’ marketing platform.  

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Chapter 2: The Bounding Relationship of Art and Commerce 

In this chapter, the historical blurring phenomenon of art and commerce and the mutual complementary development strategy will be analysed. As the significant presentation momentous environment and intermediary of art and commerce, space is a necessary term for us to analyse and understand the blurring phenomenon. Nonetheless, I think that the core content is the essence of art and commerce, and this is why the chapter discusses them in the macroscopic perspective.  

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The first part expounds the necessary reasons for the emergence of collisional spaces from the historical perspective by means of analysing the continuous subversion of artistic form development. The second part expounds the similarities among art business operation which is always being controlled or influenced by capital, traditional art spaces and traditional commercial spaces. Finally, the chapter analyses the LV Foundation in detail, a complicated mixture of an art and commerce, basing on typical modern white cube spaces, which further demonstrates the close connection and similarities of art and commerce in the modern cultural setting.  

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  -- The Reason for The Blurred Line

Undeniably, the first step of exploring the causes of the fusion of art and commerce is to analyse the developing changes and historic timelines of art and commerce combined with contemporary social culture.  

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What is art? There are many contentions of art’s definition, especially after contemporary and modern art going into the mature stage. In the era of open artistic aesthetics, the question is hard to answer accurately, even if there is no significance of exploring the answer (Sascha, 2013). In modern society, it has become an important philosophy topic and concept for people’s understandings of art, which thereby does not have any unified standard or theory of artistic definition and form.  

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With the rapid development of modern culture and new technologies in the late 19th century, art also began to question its form and category. Before the emergence of modern culture, fine art was constrained to more or less fixed forms (oil painting canvas or bronze plaster sculpture), content (portraits or natural landscape), producers (the typical post-Renaissance artist role), or presenting environment (displays in museums or churches). However, the only one fixed artistic form of fine art was totally reversed in the later half a century, just as Gordon stated in his book Philosophy of the Arts, ‘Beginning with European Impressionism and Expressionism and then erupting with the historical avantgardes of the early 20th century, art’s questioning of its own means became a recurring cutting-edge strategy’. Nowadays, people have defined arts developing after the renaissance with many theories, as well as classifying these art works into different styles and schools of painting, for example, Florentine painting, Cubism, Fauvism, Post-Impressionism, or Futurism. Yet, the method districting and gridding arts by institutions and regulated style requirements were practicable before the appearance of avant-garde art, which would fail in the 20th century’s art world. As Maria argued in 2014, ‘The constant subversion of these boundaries is a central aspect of the history of modern art.’ When the artist line has been questioned time and again, its form, content, producer image and the environment for presentation will be totally changed, and the past definitions and classifications of art can no longer be accurate.  

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Among them, the top three symbolic art movements are minimalism — or ‘the extension of geometric abstractions’ (Tosaki & Eiichi, 2017), conceptual art — the concepts are the only element, and pop art — simple and bold images of commonplace objects (Kleiner and Gardner, 1980). Although these artistic styles originate from American abstract art, we can still clearly recognize their development in a constantly reversing processes, from minimalism abandoning complexity and pursuing pureness, conceptualism reflecting self-thinking to nihilism focusing on pop art. Some regard American abstract art as the Pandora’s box of modern art, precisely because of which, many anti-art movements of every description shocking the art circles sprung up incessantly in the 1960s and 1970s, therefore causing a subsistence crisis to traditional concepts of art. The only one thing we can confirm in the end is that avant-garde art pursues a challenging art line, resulting in the continuous updating and renascence of the public aesthetic (Brown & Patterson, 2014), which also endows these new-style artists with labels of the brave, the rebellious and the distinctive, leading to highly individualistic successes.  

However, modern commerce’s advancing with the times and the pursuing of new culture inevitably lead to a blurred line in the art field. In turn, ‘the contemporary commercial culture has become increasingly aestheticised’ (Maria, 2014). Therefore, art and commerce function as two similar and overlapped sources, fundamentally and closely intertwining and linking together. 

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In my opinion, it is inadequate to attribute the phenomenon to the use of art of consumerism for aesthetic purposes and this is because a complicated social phenomenon is necessarily bidirectional. Also, it is indeed because avant-garde art leads to the precondition of revising fundamental artistic categories, eventually resulting in a blurred line.  

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  -- The Commerce Behind The Art

While art is considered as a traditional and time-honoured pastime, commerce, with its new force, is deemed to be an invasive party by the majority of old-fashioned ideologies. Benesch and Haselstein (2007) indicated that today art is often used ‘as a bargaining chip for securing the future of the institution’, its criticism here is clear. But, does consumerism really take over cultural and artistic fields? I reserve my opinion, for the argument does not take in the cultural and commercial complexity and developmental possibilities in the contemporary social environment into consideration. Next, I will argue that the circumstance may not bring about bad influences on the art circle. Namely, the root cause, the relationship of cooperation and mutual benefits have always existed.  

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Throughout the history of art, in various empires of gone by eras, wealthy benefactors — like royal personages, pontiffs or nobility — has always been the mainstays in the development of art. The empire also impelled the artistic development and left an indelibly and profound influence on art history. In other words, art has been developed by relying on capital since it was born. Oswald Spengler indicated that, ‘art is a subsystem in the system of cultural value, while culture is the sum total of the material and spiritual wealth created by humans in the process of social development’(Spengler, 2010). Most of the earliest civilizations emerged from commerce. Commercial activities do not only create opportunities for various heterogeneous cultures to directly communicate and collide, but also stimulate the prosperity of the art culture because of the strong market demand. 

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There is a powerful example, often easily ignored, which is the core impetus of renaissance: The House of Medici, who have been called ‘The Godfathers of the Renaissance’. In the 14th century, Italy invented the mode of capital production, when people were gradually influenced by the new idea, humanism, and the status of artists had been improved. The Medici Family, as the dominant family in Florence (including three pontiffs), was unshakable in their political capital, status and even their power in the country, driving art to reach unprecedented heights with their strong sponsorships and supports. The first artist they supported was Masaccio, who was later considered as the founder of Italian Renaissance drawing. Since then, they sponsored nearly all outstanding artists in the renaissance period, including Botticelli, Da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo, creating a good environment for them and devoting themselves into creation without worrying about everyday existence. These artists created many art classics in the prototype of the Medici Family. In addition, in the Renaissance Period, the Medici Family privately possessed masses of current cultural heritages, such as Santa Maria Del Fiore, the first landmark architecture of the renaissance period, the Uffizi Gallery, one of the world’s four greatest art museums with 130 thousand collections, and Pitti Palace, the biggest art museum in Florence.  

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Undeniably, as the capital core of the entire renaissance, the Medici family had a greatly propelled renaissance, and all developed culture and arts encompassed the capital. The renaissance was honoured as ‘the greatest progressive change that human has never experienced’. Its significant achievements not only focused on the revival of ancient Greek and Roman art, but also reflected the transformation from feudalism to the capitalist regime.  

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Besides the above-mentioned art relying on capital in history, we find that in contemporary society, there are amazingly similar functions of art museums and shopping malls in exhibiting culture. As Neil Harris observed in the late 19th century, ‘many commentators, both friendly and hostile to the metropolitan museum, have noted the relationship between the store and the great museum …’. Retail shops and museums are both display spaces, and the products on display are both aesthetic, educational, and commercially valuable —just with different emphases. Both of these spaces are approaches to ‘democratise taste and luxury’ (Neal, 1990). Whether the public want to enjoy the pleasure of aesthetics or consume, they can enter both two spaces which are controlled and operated by capital. 

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The art critic Michael Kimmelman commented in an article in the New York Times, ‘it’s one of the dirty secrets of American cultural history ... that these two great offspring of the late 19th century have been linked from the beginning, dancing a kind of high-culture-low-culture pas de deux. They came from similar roots, had related goals and worked in tandem more times than anyone can remember. The story of their association goes to the very core of American cultural identity.’ In layman's terms, art is displayed in stores and consumer goods are displayed in museums. It is just that this is not noticed and recognized by the public. 

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In the modern development of these two exhibition spaces, they have chosen two directions: One is the exuberant and exaggerated exhibition style, just like a complicated museum decorated with oil painting portraits on the walls or a popular exhibition and real shopping centre; or a simple style, just as the new exhibition design developed in 60s — Brian O'Doherty coined the term ‘white cube’ in the 1986. As Christoph Grunenberg (2002) mentioned, ‘by the 1920s, these two extremes of presentation were well established, and over the past century shop displays have oscillated between these two opposites. The presentation of art in galleries and museums has simultaneously fed off and inspired commercial displays.’ In fact, I do not think there is a big difference between these two styles, on account that they have a same objective: longing to present their own special sacred spaces, far away from daily life. The only one small difference is reflected in the different degrees of the built experience atmosphere. ‘If the atmosphere in the stores was less sacred and hushed than in the museums, it was still special and self-contained’ (Harris, 1990). As Maria argued, ‘this auratization and fetishization is attempted by almost every kind of presentational space’. As a form of space to reduce environmental interference, the white cube has been borrowed and used by many modern churches, such as the minimalist St. Moritz Church, completed in 2009 in Germany (see Figure 1 and 2). From a spatial perspective, I do not think most people can tell the difference between contemporary minimalist stores and white cube galleries. 

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