Art Goes Fleet First Toward the Sky

Long, long ago, fingernails came in one natural color, until someone thought to paint them red. The desire to sell product has given rise to many a decorative idea, large and small.

The promotional folks at Alaska Airlines had a big one. They didn’t see any reason an airplane’s tail should be plain, not when it could be used for a little brand identification. So now 40-foot-high portraits of Eskimos adorn the fleet’s tails. If nothing else, the colorful native Alaskans should help hurried travelers realize that if they’re bound for the Caribbean, and an Eskimo wearing a fur-trimmed parka is smiling down at them from the back of the plane, they’re boarding the wrong airship.

Alaska isn’t the only carrier sending pictures into the friendly skies. Austrian Airlines has Johann Strauss on the fuselage of their Airbus 321, . and All Nippon Airways jets are decorated with characters from Pokemon, a Japanese game and television cartoon series.

The idea that any surface could be used to display art could be a nice thought, but the creeping commercialism this trend represents might result in the billboarding of our environment. Buses progressed from carrying small ads to being moving commercials, painted from stem to stern. What’s next? Maybe sneaker manufacturers will start putting swooshes on athletic shoes, and designers will plaster their logos on clothes and initials on handbags. As if anyone would stand for that.