Buyways: Billboards, Automobiles, and the American Landscape (Cultural Spaces)

The highway has become the buyway. Along the millions of miles the public travels, advertisers spend billions on images of cola, cars, vodka, fast food, and swimming pools that blur past us, catching our fleeting attention and turning the landscape into a corridor of commerce. A smart, succinct, and visually compelling history of the billboard in America, Buyways traces how the outdoor advertising industry changed the face of American commercialism. Taking us from itinerant bill-stickers of circus posters in the 19th century to the blinking, beeping, 3-D eyesores of today, Gudis argues that roadside advertising has turned the landscape itself into a commodity to be bought and sold as advertising space. Buyways vividly chronicles the battles between environmentalists and businessmen as well as the response of artists, from New Deal photographers who satirized the billboard-infested landscape to commercial artists who embraced the kitsch of it all. It also shows how advertisers tapped into the American mythology of the open road, promoting mobile consumption as the American Dream on four wheels. Entertaining and brilliantly illustrated, Buyways is a vibrant road map of the new geography of consumption. Also includes an eight page color insert. Agriculture, Geography & Environmental Sciences BOOK COVER 1 TITLE 4 COPYRIGHT 5 CONTENTS 8 INTRODUCTION 10 CHAPTER 1 BEFORE THE CAR 18 PART 1 PRODUCING A LANDSCAPE OF SIGNS 44 A NATION ON WHEELS 46 CHAPTER 2 THE CULTURE OF MOBILITY 49 CHAPTER 3 PRODUCING MOBILE AUDIENCES AND CORRIDORS OF CONSUMPTION 58 CHAPTER 4 THE AESTHETICS OF SPEED AND THE POWERS OF “PICTURIZATION” 75 CHAPTER 5 MODERN ART AND ADVERTISING 88 PART 2 DISTRIBUTING TRAFFIC AND TRADE 108 VISUALIZING DISTRIBUTION 110 CHAPTER 6 THE CONSOLIDATION AND GROWTH OF NATIONAL ADVERTISING 112 CHAPTER 7 TRAFFIC AND TRADE: “BUYING POWER IN MOTION” 124 CHAPTER 8 AN ARCHITECTURE OF MOBILITY 136 CHAPTER 9 THE STRIP 160 PART 3 “THE BILLBOARD WAR” SCENIC SISTERS AND THE BUSINESS OF HIGHWAY BEAUTIFICATION 170 “THE BILLBOARD WAR” 172 CHAPTER 10 WHEN SEPARATE SPHERES COLLIDE 175 CHAPTER 11 THE PASTORAL VIEW 191 CHAPTER 12 “BILLBOARD BARONS” 205 CHAPTER 13 ZONING AND THE ROAD TO FEDERAL LEGISLATION 220 LOSERS AND WINNERS 236 CONCLUSION: THE ROAD AHEAD 240 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 256 NOTES 260 BIBLIOGRAPHY 312 ILLUSTRATION CREDITS 328 INDEX 332

gudis Investigates The Cultural Implications Of The Billboards And Other Outdoor Advertising On The Built And Natural Environments, And People's Experience Of These Basic Facts Of Daily Life. Pivoting On The Themes Of Production, Distribution, And Consumption, She Describes Producing A Landscape Of Signs, Decentralization And The Birth Of The Strip, And The Business Of Highway Beautification. The Historical Record, She Notes, Is Heavily Weighted Toward Big Outdoor Advertising Companies And Their Most Strident Opponents, And It Is Difficult To Know The Range Of What Ordinary People Thought Of The Ads Or How Their Viewing Affected Their Actions. Distributed By Taylor And Francis. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, Or

Annotation Shows how the placeless markets that billboards created presage the pop-ups in the ultimate placeless space, the Internet. Richly illustrated with more than 60 illustrations--including an 8-page color insert--of billboards and ads from across the century, this book traces the evolution of billboards from urban centers of the 1920s to the freeways that stretch across America today. In Buyways, Catherine Gudis focuses on the development of the outdoor advertising industry in 20th century America, and its role in the commodification of the landscape.