BUZZ NEWS

Classical Beauties Slim Down in Anorexic Art

Posted on January 8, 2010
Angela Natividad

For the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Eating Disorders (ANAD), and to raise awareness of eating disorders among Germans, Ogilvy/Frankfurt took classical representations of beauty in the arts and reimagined them to suit contemporary aesthetics.

Tableaux like Edouard Manet’s Olympia were repainted by artist Remus Grecu and his team. The already-slim Olympia was turned into a wasted shadow of her former self, apple cheeks sunken. She reclines across — but hardly dents — her bed as a servant casts her a skeptical glance.

The show appeared at Städel Museum in Germany, buttressed by print ads in art and beauty magazines. An online video about the event ironically details the "Contemporary Beauty Ideal." Those possessed by the conviction to take action are sent to antianorexia.net.

The campaign resulted in a 16% traffic increase to the ANAD site, "remarkably high single donations" and some WOM traction.

Frankly, the work is great for showing people with "normal eating behaviours" how distorted perceptions of beauty have become. But those truly in danger — anorexics and bulimics — are perhaps less well-served by the shock factor.

For many of them, the contrast of exposed hipbones to the fleshiness of older muses is an improvement, not a travesty. As one YouTube commenter eerily put it:

“using irony to get your point across is lost on someone with anorexia. we will merely see skeletal bodies being displayed as art they way they should be. hope this made you some money.”

"The way they should be": those words ring louder than any intellectual accolade proffered by someone not suffering from an eating disorder. It’s a perspective worth keeping in mind when managing a similar type of client.