In the early 1960s, two landmark scientific publications indicted cigarette smoking as a major cause of lung cancer and other fatal diseases. As the result of the reports of the United Kingdom’s Royal College of Physicians in 1962 and the United States Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee in 1964, cigarette commercials were banned from TV and radio in the UK by Parliament in 1965 and in the US by Congress in 1969. The bans were intended to reduce exposure to cigarette advertising by children and teenagers, but the tobacco industry circumvented the restrictions by increasing cigarette ads in the print media and on billboards at sporting events, many of which were televised. Creativity in cigarette marketing reached its zenith in the 1980s when advertising agency owner and art collector Charles Saatchi thought of an entirely new kind of campaign to promote the brand Silk Cut. Inspired by the slashed canvases and punctured metal sculptures of artist Lucio Fontana, the visual puns for the words “silk cut” made it the best-selling cigarette brand in the UK. Other ad agencies, such as Leo Burnett (for Philip Morris’ Marlboro brand) and J. Walter Thompson (for RJ Reynolds’ Winston brand) began to play with words and images. “We’re not allowed to tell you anything about Winston cigarettes, so here’s a stuffed aardvark,” read one such provocative, absurd, and hilarious cigarette advertisement in 1985. This exhibition presents some of the most innovative—and invidious—cigarette advertisements ever created.