The Long Hangover of the Roaring Eighties
By TOM DEIGNAN
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This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
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Metamorphosis is as central to art as it is to myth. When an artist transforms his materials, he becomes a shaman. When an artist’s materials are not transformed, he remains a charlatan — and we are left with a mere field of paint, not the “Sistine Ceiling”; a chunk of marble, not the “Pietà.” With the advent of collage in the 1890s, however, metamorphosis took on new meaning. Invented by the Beggarstaffs (the British poster designers and brothers-in-law James Pryde and William Nicholson), collage introduced appropriated objects and cut-and-pasted materials into art’s arena. But it was the Cubists — Picasso, Braque, Schwitters, Gris — who, as Modern shamans, first transformed detritus and ephemera into art.
By TOM DEIGNAN
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By SHARON KEHNEMUI
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By MATTHEW RICE
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By CARL ROLLYSON
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By SHARON KEHNEMUI
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By JEFFREY WELLS
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By SHARON KEHNEMUI
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By JOSEPH CURL
|Metamorphosis is as central to art as it is to myth. When an artist transforms his materials, he becomes a shaman. When an artist’s materials are not transformed, he remains a charlatan — and we are left with a mere field of paint, not the “Sistine Ceiling”; a chunk of marble, not the “Pietà.” With the advent of collage in the 1890s, however, metamorphosis took on new meaning. Invented by the Beggarstaffs (the British poster designers and brothers-in-law James Pryde and William Nicholson), collage introduced appropriated objects and cut-and-pasted materials into art’s arena. But it was the Cubists — Picasso, Braque, Schwitters, Gris — who, as Modern shamans, first transformed detritus and ephemera into art.
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