In Los Angeles' Art Center School last week, paintings by 31 U.S. contemporaries were aligned like bottles in a hypochondriac's medicine chest. Alongside them hung slick-paper reproductions showing how each picture had been used as a magazine ad "health message" by the Upjohn Co. The artists had not had health particularly in mind; Upjohn had bought the pictures plus commercial rights, invented their own labels.
Artist Dean Fausett had painted a creditable landscape of hills, trees and varicolored underbrush. The health message, tacked on by Upjohn: BREEDING PLACES FOR SNEEZES—WHEEZES. Earl Kerkam had painted a lugubrious gentleman, tired and mistrustful. Upjohn had...