Yes, I believe the art is found in the poetic approach. Over the past three decades I've approached collage as the synthesis of two tendencies in modern visual culture defined in 1925 by German art historian Franz Roh: "The pictorial techniques of modernist abstraction and the realism of the photographic fragment."
That is a piece of lovely poetry all by itself. The 'photographic fragment' ...nice. Yes photography really created a crisis in the visual art world didn't it? 'Ok, now that a photo can capture the visual, what are us image makers going to do?' they were thinking. Go inward, look inside, excavate the depth, invent the new language of that. And off we go.
'Excavate the depth' is an excellent way to put it. Back in the 1990s' I referred to my process as creating a re-associated image, a work of art which altered the original meaning or intent of the image, and engaged the viewer in a new reading. I curated a show in 1997 titled The Re-Associated Image'. I remember the excitement I felt when I realized how open-ended this journey would be. My recent studies for paintings are abstract optical color designs, but the process of working from a study created with paper on my worktables is pretty much the same.
Max Ernst: “The art of collage is the systematic exploitation of the coincidental or artificially provoked encounter of two of more unrelated realities on an apparently inappropriate plane and the spark of poetry created by the proximity of these realities.”
Yes, I believe the art is found in the poetic approach. Over the past three decades I've approached collage as the synthesis of two tendencies in modern visual culture defined in 1925 by German art historian Franz Roh: "The pictorial techniques of modernist abstraction and the realism of the photographic fragment."
That is a piece of lovely poetry all by itself. The 'photographic fragment' ...nice. Yes photography really created a crisis in the visual art world didn't it? 'Ok, now that a photo can capture the visual, what are us image makers going to do?' they were thinking. Go inward, look inside, excavate the depth, invent the new language of that. And off we go.
'Excavate the depth' is an excellent way to put it. Back in the 1990s' I referred to my process as creating a re-associated image, a work of art which altered the original meaning or intent of the image, and engaged the viewer in a new reading. I curated a show in 1997 titled The Re-Associated Image'. I remember the excitement I felt when I realized how open-ended this journey would be. My recent studies for paintings are abstract optical color designs, but the process of working from a study created with paper on my worktables is pretty much the same.
A favorite quote of mine on collage:
Max Ernst: “The art of collage is the systematic exploitation of the coincidental or artificially provoked encounter of two of more unrelated realities on an apparently inappropriate plane and the spark of poetry created by the proximity of these realities.”
Hi Ginnie! Thanks for the quote. Very Surrealist of him. Collage is a lot about poetic ideas. or ideas approached poetically.