Cut-and-Paste, Then and Now

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The New York Sun

Shortly before World War I, the Cubists began incorporating bits of their physical environment — printed images, text, and patterns — into their work to heighten its spatial paradoxes. So was born the medium of collage. Today, the tenets of Cubism hold no special sway for most artists, but the medium of collage thrives. Always intriguing for its invocations of materiality and process, collage also lends itself especially well to the discordant, composite narratives of much contemporary art. It fits naturally, moreover, with the current enthusiasm for multimedia work, photography-based techniques, and imagery derived from popular media.

Pavel Zoubok’s current exhibition offers an evocative slice of the history of collage — or, more precisely, two slices: “1968/2008: The Culture of Collage” pairs contemporary works with those produced in 1968 — the year many of us associate with assassinations, social unrest, and the daily body counts of an unpopular war. The last of these, of course, has particular relevance today, inviting a comparison of traumas past and present.

References to national politics, however, are surprisingly rare and subtle in the exhibition’s nearly 50 works. Only one piece refers specifically to war: Alice Attie’s newspaper collage “Requiem: Iraq” (2008), which depicts a woman in a head scarf, her arms folded in prayer or self-protection as a distant figure flees a conflagration. Ron Monroe’s mixed-media assemblage “RFK in 68” (1968) is poignantly topical in another fashion. Here the outline of a pistol shows through an issue of the Daily News blaring the headline “RFK DEAD”; below, a realistic portrait of the senator is partly occluded by fragments of cartoon-strip faces, as if smothered by press imagery. Salvatore Meo’s mixed-media assemblage “My America” (c. 1968) consists of a small box opening up to show two miniature American flags, one pristine and the other faded. Mark Wagner’s collage “Wading In It” (2008) wittily depicts George Washington in the shallow end of a swimming pool fabricated entirely out of bits of U.S. paper currency. These last two works, with their implications of social inequalities, could belong to either 1968 or 2008, suggesting that times (and artists) haven’t changed a great deal.

Several works explicitly address sex as a commodity. Al Hansen’s collage “Windy City Woman” (1968) turns a female form into a giant candy bar of sorts, filling its curvaceous outlines with letters cut from Hershey’s wrappers: “HEY,” “SHE,” “HIS,” “YES.” In Martha Rosler’s photomontage “Bowl of Fruit” (1966-72), a flirtatious nude eyes us from her thoroughly modern kitchen. Forty years later, India Evans’s mixed-media collage “Like Golden Eternities” (2008) casts a harsher light on sexual appetites, illustrating graphic couplings in what might be the corridor of a modern luxury hotel. Jonathan Solo’s “Still Life” (2008), a graphite collage on paper, is the ultimate mix of raw and refined, featuring a man with a leather muzzle amongst the exquisitely rendered details of a brain, heart, penis, and breast.

Josh Dorman’s colorful mixed-media collage of mice cavorting in and around machines (2008) stands out among a group of images combining nature and technology, while Don Joint’s collage from 2008 deftly updates a Japanese woodcut with arcs of antique postage stamps. A section of works with floral motifs employs a bewildering variety of materials — petals, fabric, foil, butterflies, synthetic hair, and gems — to flowery effect. Elsewhere, C.K. Wilde re-creates one of the Unicorn Tapestries in brightly colored foreign banknotes. In this exquisite collage from 2008, the engraved patterns of banknotes serve as a background for flowers made from rosettes containing the denominations “5” and “10.” Jerry Jofen’s untitled mixed-media collage of 1968 comes closest to the formal vitality of Kurt Schwitters with a vigorous opposition of elements: a section of an architectural blueprint, a cardboard holder for dental X-rays, a strip of corrugated paper.

The installation includes works by several heavyweights, all dating to 1968. Joseph Cornell’s collage “The Ghost of Franz Liszt” consists of a symmetrical inkblot — reminiscent of Rorschach tests — suggesting a likeness at once delicate and monstrous. A collage by Christo and Jeanne-Claude documents their construction of a 280-foot-tall inflated structure for Documenta IV in Kassel, Germany. Ray Johnson’s collage “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” adds a photograph of Shirley Temple to a poster for the 1967 movie, and superimposes a new, grotesque head over Sidney Poitier’s. Most poignant of all, however, is Joe Brainard’s mixed-media collage “Untitled (Good and Fruity Madonna),” which features four identical, kitsch images of the Madonna and Child overlapping an unfolded box of Good and Plenty candy. The juxtaposition of subjects of high devotion and lowly pleasures, in packagings sentimental and stylish, respectively, are enough to make one question one’s own allegiances. How to reconcile simple faith and commercialism? No easy dilemma in 1968, nor four decades later.

Until August 8 (533 W. 23rd St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, 212-675-7490).


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