Art: How to Sell Boxes

Peppy Walter Paepcke, 53, is one of a growing tribe of businessmen who go in for modern art. As board chairman of Chicago’s big Container Corp. of America, Paepcke finds semi-abstract paintings not only enjoyable but also useful—they make eye-catching ads. During World War II, Paepcke ran a series of such full-page magazine ads celebrating the U.N. and, almost incidentally, Container Corp.’s boxes (TIME, April 30, 1945). Afterward he launched a second series on the 48 states, plus four U.S. territories and the District of Columbia. Last week that four-year series came to a close.

The commerical theory behind the ads was perfectly clear: boxes are hard to glamorize but well-designed ads may help persuade readers that Container Corp.’s boxes are well-designed. The problem was to get unhackneyed views of the states from native artists whose work was abstract enough to put design ahead of representation. With the exceptions of some states not rich in native painters, Paepcke succeeded. Occasionally, as in Morris

Graves’s Oregon, he even got a museum-caliber job.

Graves had begun badly; he submitted half a dozen sketches, gave up in despair when they were all rejected, and took off for Hawaii. When the N. W. Ayer & Son advertising agency, in charge of the series, shipped a bale of Oregon pine boughs after him, Graves used the boughs as subject matter for one last brilliant try.

Two of the most abstract paintings in the series were not a bit “modern.” Peter Nielson, who painted Alaska, is a Frog Indian whose work owes everything to his totem-pole-making ancestors. Painter Nielson was pleased to get the job, but explained that as the fish were running it would take him a couple of months to get around to it. In due time he shipped a six-foot-square totemic design, painted on cedar boards, airmail to Chicago. Like Nielson, Hopi Indian Fred Kabotie, who painted Arizona, refused to submit preliminary sketches. He hastened into the desert, shot a mule deer, skinned it, painted a picture on the hide, and sent it off. The painted hide, complete with head and tail, now hangs in the office where Paepcke is ruminating a new campaign to start next month.

The new series will illustrate great quotations from history, supplied by the University of Chicago’s Mortimer Adler (TIME, April 24). As in the past, Paepcke will get “fine” modern artists to do the job. “When everybody else begins using them,” Paepcke says, “we’ll switch to the standard commercial ones.”