Hasta La Motion!

Oliverio Toscani was no stranger to controversy by the time he got the world in a huff with his provocative campaigns for United Colors of Bennetton. In fact, his work with copywriter Emanuelle Pirella many years before on Jesus Jeans led to a significantly more European fervor that was no less outrageous than his later work. At that time drawing parallels between religion and commerce – or exposing the hypocrisy of the two – by pairing reworked passages of the bible with vibrantly colored images of his girlfriend’s tanned butt cheeks overflowing out of …uhh…Jesus Jeans, was a lot for Europeans to handle. Needless to say, Jesus Jeans weren’t around for long, but this ad lives on as an iconic example of art meeting commerce. If only advertising would get this good again.