Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1037291 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
Gudis prose is... aerodynamic... a cultural history of roadside advertising, its meanings and methods, and how it reshaped the American scene. -- Los Angeles Times
Editorial Abstract
. -- Reference and Research Books News
Gudis prose is... aerodynamic... a cultural history of roadside advertising, its meanings and methods, and how it reshaped the American scene.
. -- L.A. Times
...inclusive, thorough research and scholarship that makes this volume an indispensable resource for both enthusiasts and scholars of the American road. -- Carol Ahlgren, The Journal of American History

Gudis' prose is... aerodynamic... a cultural history of roadside advertising, its meanings and methods, and how it reshaped the American scene. -- Los Angeles Times
Editorial Abstract
. -- Reference and Research Books News
Gudis' prose is... aerodynamic... a cultural history of roadside advertising, its meanings and methods, and how it reshaped the American scene.
. -- L.A. Times
...inclusive, thorough research and scholarship that makes this volume an indispensable resource for both enthusiasts and scholars of the American road. -- Carol Ahlgren, The Journal of American History

About the Author
Cathy Gudis is an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma and received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. She formerly worked as a curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and is the co-editor of two art books, Helter Skelter: LA Art in the 1990s and A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation.

Customer Reviews

An intriguing, original, seminal history of travel routes
Catherine Gudis' Buyways is a unique and intrinsically fascinating history of the advertising billboard industry in America. Of immense value for the academic study of American business history, Buyways is also highly recommended reding for travelers and non-specialist general readers interested in wayside advertising and highway history. From legal battles between environmentalists and business interests, to the involvement of artists and behvioral scientists in billboard presentation and design, Buyways provides an intriguing, original, seminal history of travel routes and advertising format choices.