Romanticism and Tony Kaye

Tony Kaye, advertiser and director of film, music videos and documentaries, is an icon known for his passion for working against the grain. His creativity references the values and aspects of Romanticism, this idea is explored in Joan Gibbon's 'Art and Advertising'. Gibbon defines Kaye as a postmodernism creative as he represents the abolition of hierarchy between disciplines.
Kaye fits the role of a Romantic rebel through his approach to both art and advertising; ignoring the institutional forces of both and producing work that engages the feelings and subjectivity of the viewer. His disregard for the views of the client in favour of his own expressive judgement enables him to produce a rare type of advertising that clearly draws its creativity from individual vision. Studzinski states that it is this self directed manner that fits Kaye into Romanticism, he is the master of the discipline.

There are many motifs that are central to Romanticism within Kaye's advertising work, such as loss of childhood innocence, man versus nature and the unpredictability of life.
For example, his advert for Dunlop tyres 'Tested for the Unexpected' 1993 (see below)



In this advert we see that Kaye is not afraid to disorientate the viewer; using strange, threatening imagery, creating a sensual overload and a radical depature from run of the mill conventions. There is a heavy emphasis on the grotesque and artificial, with a lurking threat of devastation, playing with the 'sublime'.

In his advert for Volvo titled 'Twister' (1995) Kaye creates an unexpected viewing experience. He promotes the product, but also transcends the more functionalist narrative structures of conventional film and advertising. This transcends the viewer, allowing the advert to resonate in their memory.



Kaye interrupts the fast paced language of a typical action film with less immediate imagery. These interruptions are defamiliarising and poignant. They are designed to wound the viewer, catching them off guard and unsettling them by breaking convention and punctuating the narrative. This has been termed the 'punctum' by Roland Barthes and examples of this include static views of the same man's weather-beaten face that appeared in negative half way through and the momentary slowing down of the explosion of a house.
The advert can be described as a piece of high Romantic art as many parallels can be drawn between the two; foreboarding landscapes, the power of nature and nature versus technology, all dramatic contrasts.

Another example of Kaye's work is the 1988 advert for VW Passatt which contains signifiers of chaos, disorder and distruption.



The advert has a strong appeal to nostalgia, most noticeably with the black and white photography.
Immediately, the viewer is disarmed by the sentimental, angelic feature of the little girl. The advert is a story of her witnessing the harsh realities of the city; the shock and collision of crowds, noises of the city (sirens, traffic) and her ultimate loss of innocence. The soapbox speaker, the enraged car driver and the criminal are also symbols of disorder and disruption.
If you take a step back from the smaller details of the advert, the girl herself represents an earlier rose-tinted era, set against the harsh realities of modern life.

Kaye's adverts are different to most. Many other adverts do not convey such complexity of emotion, instead they exploit basic insecurities that come down to owning the right products for social status.

Kaye certainly bucks the trend, and works to ignore and fight against conventions of both art and advertising.