Aesthetic Culture Of Images, Symbols And Identity - Advertising Research

Mature development of market economy, with the help of science and technology, leads the modern society into a consuming society, in which advertisement becomes a new aesthetic target. This thesis, stimulated by such a social background, points out that belonging and identification are the psychological basis of advertisement aesthetical culture in modern society. Advertisement has become our new identification target due to its direct connection with the objects; yet, advertisement is not a pure object, which is between the matter and the spirit. For most of us, who seek spiritual belonging and identification, for a long run, yet result in vain and it are demonstrated by Modern Enlightenment Movement and Rebellion Movement, is a new belonging and identification target. Similarly, because it is not a pure object, advertisement is also the target of belong and identification for modern people under the material pressure.Advertisement, due to its semiotic significance, finds itself the target of belonging and identification for modern people, which is the result of mass media and advertisers co-operating. The advertisement-making personnel edit those complying with the mainstream ideology, interests of advertisers' and internal demands from the consumers into the advertisements by encoding, and they express that vividly through the advertiserment images, which, consequently, become the carrier of certain significance. By circulation and consumption, most consumers consume not only the object's value and its practical function, but also the significance attached to the object. The procedure that the mass purchase the commodities is both a process of consuming materials and of consuming culture, in which the mass are never passive to receive, instead, they decode the advertisement works and real objects in various ways according to their needs, so as to find active elements to serve for the mass culture.In the end, the thesis comments on the influence that advertisement aesthetics imposed on the mass' life, that is, it makes the daily life aesthetic on the one hand, and the aesthetic appreciation practical on the other.