By whose definition? Art is creative expression and there's no qualifiers in standard definitions to exclude work that is used to promote something else.
I'd say flyers for shows are art. or movie posters. or book covers, for that matter. Or trailer music? corporate jingles? They're all art.
By academic definition in the Science of Culture school of thought that I align with.
Art is roughly self-expression or interpretation of reality performed with symbolic means.
It's a debatable definition of course, as aesthetics are nebulous, but most others are far too broad and therefore lose their meaning and usability, at least in the academic context.
> I'd say flyers for shows are art. or movie posters. or book covers, for that matter. Or trailer music? corporate jingles? They're all art.
They are not if we're talking in generals, though there can be conditions where a specific piece can be viewed as such, of course. All the things you mentioned are products of craft most of the time. Crafts belong to the wider sphere of aesthetic culture of course, but it's not art. Of course, I know some artist/illustrators closely collaborating with authors/musicians for their posters and covers, but it's more of an exception to the rule.
Roughly speaking, the need to tailor a creation to align with the desired brand image or marketing strategy inevitably conflicts with honest self-expression.
> By academic definition in the Science of Culture school of thought that I align with.
Can you give me one example of this school of thought? An actual institution or some book/paper that goes into this topic? I have not been able to find much anything except broader topics of culturology or science of culture. I've also not found anything suggesting that my examples aren't considered art by it.
> All the things you mentioned are products of craft most of the time. Crafts belong to the wider sphere of aesthetic culture of course, but it's not art.
Crafts and Art overlap frequently. Someone can be a woodworker that builds tables and they might not be an artist. They fine tune their craft and build sturdy, excellent tables, but they're not creating art. However, if they are making creative decisions about how they want to express themselves through the tables they create, yes, it is art.
> Of course, I know some artist/illustrators closely collaborating with authors/musicians for their posters and covers, but it's more of an exception to the rule.
It hardly matters if they are or aren't, you don't need a band to participate in the creation of a flyer for it to be considered art. The art part comes in from what the artist who is creating it.
> Roughly speaking, the need to tailor a creation to align with the desired brand image or marketing strategy inevitably conflicts with honest self-expression.
Constraints are a normal part of the process of creating art. If I commission someone to create an oil painting on a canvas of a specific size, that is also requiring an artist to tailor their creation to align with an external factor out of their control. That doesn't make the resulting piece not art.
I get that physical constraints aren't the same as ones that are tied into art, like what message you're communicating. I think I just fundamentally disagree that it disqualifies something from being art. If I give a writing prompt to a writer, is the resulting piece of literature disqualified from being art because I shaped what it is to be about? I don't think so. Similarly, I don't think that defining themes to use in the creation of a piece of art makes it less honest. It just means that the self-expression is conveyed through different means.
Being true to HN guideline of assuming good faith, I can say that the place is really irrelevant, as, from my experience, you can't effectively force a definition within an institution without taking away academic autonomy. Mind it, this is a definition stemming from the Social Studies/Culturology context, and not from Art Criticism/Art History, as the former fields do not concern themselves with making a value judgement.
I'm long out of the loop, so I can give only general directions. You could say that the definition in question aligns with Riegl's idea of embodiment of Kunstwollen, perhaps in some way with Collingwood's aesthetic expressivism view of art, and also integrates the semiotics approach, which helps with underlining the importance of both the form/medium and the subjectivity of perception (this is important for looking at art in historical/sociological context).
If your question was, in fact, an Ad Locus attack - well, the name for it is Genetic Fallacy, I believe.
PS: A school of thought is located in the minds of its supporters ;)
My postscript just meant to point out the fact that since you asked a question about a school as a place while answering to my comment mentioning a school of thought (that's not a place), perhaps there's some miscommunication happening.
Me mentioning a school of thought and not a specific institution implied the fact that when it comes to culture, there could be a considerable variety of positions within one such institution. For example: when it comes to universities, students can be taught by professors from different faculties but the subjects can intersect significantly, so they get to see the varying approaches to even the basic stuff and they are supposed to make their own minds. Humanities are like that, there's no formulas set in stone until disproven.
2. It looks like you're implying the ad is somehow a piece of art. It's not, it's an ad.