Visa Funds, Leverages Starving Artists For Campaign

Now that Visa is in on the whole graffiti thing, graffiti artists might as well throw aways their Krylon, call it a day and move on to some new, yet to be tinged by marketers form of expression. Visa, with help from artist Trish Grantham is taking its "Life Takes Visa" to Greenwich Village in the form of of a giant wall mural with the tagline, "Life Takes Expression." Below the mural, Visa will display other artwork in the form of sculpture, furniture, fashion and more graffiti from artists Christopher Natrop, Jeff Soto, Andy Diaz Hope, Anne Faith Nicholls, AXIS, Erik Pawassar, Parvez Taj, Ron Reihel, Christopher Cuseo, Eric Joyner, Elizabeth Paige Smith, Charlotte Ronson, Dario Antonioni and Hayley Starr.

One one hand, this is a good thing. Artists who would never have a chance for thwir work to be seen now can with the help of Visa. On the other hand, purists will see this as yet another commercialization of art. Also, if the press releases that announced this sort of thing would at least acknowledge a line is being blurred here, it might be more readily accepted but when spewed marketing babble such as this is uttered, "To engage consumers and bring our brand campaign to life, the 'Life Takes Expression' project provides an ideal platform to reinforce the role Visa plays in empowering consumers to express themselves," it just makes the eyes roll back into the head. See the work here.

UPDATE: Copyranter isn't too pleased about Visa's use of artists to promote itself.