The Magical From the Mundane

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.