ERASMUS STUDENTS: SPRING SEMESTER 2019-2020

Collage and photomontage: present absence

“As a system, collage inaugurates a play of differences which is both about and sustained by an absent origin”.

Rosalind Krauss

The course in this semester will focus on the practices of collage and photomontage as mediums, genres, techniques but most importantly tactics and theoretical models that cross the fields of the visual arts, undermine traditional representational methods, anticipate digital representations and are clearly associated with an interrogation of the nature of representation and reality.

Collage, initially a by-product of modernity, functioned as a catalyst in modern and contemporary art. Robert Motherwell claimed that "collage is the greatest innovation of the 20th century", and Juhani Pallasmaa that "the world is a collage".

Collage is about encounters, about bringing the ideas into conversation with one another. It existed long ago before its “invention” by Braque and Picasso, in folk art and in various crafts. In its twentieth-century manifestation, collage was about meaningful encounters and juxtapositions, about displacing, disrupting and deconstructing, whilst simultaneously representing the possibility of dialogue and synthesis between heterogeneous elements. Consciously crafted juxtapositional configurations and an objection to cultural hierarchies, to conventions of representation, to the binary opposites of art and life and to the idea of authorship. As Aragon asserted, “collage called into question personality, talent, artistic property”.  Through the discussion of the artists listed below, we will see history of collage and photomontage, focusing on the ways it was used not only as a technical procedure, medium or genre but most importantly as an activity, as a state of mind and as tactics.

The students will work in groups and are expected to produce a number of two-dimensional artworks (max. 70x70 cm), using the techniques and tactics of collage and photomontage. This semester’ s field of practice and research is the Aristotle Axis of the city of Thessaloniki as proposed by the team of the Greek participation at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2020, composed by members of the teaching stuff of the Department of Architecture of AUTH.

By the end of May, students are also expected to present publicly their research on three artists from the list.

1910-1950

-PABLO PICASSO  (1881-1973), papiers collés
-GEORGE BRAQUES  (1882-1963) papiers collés
-HENRI MATISSE ( (1869-1954) cut-outs

-HANNAH HOCH (1889-1978)

-KURT SCHWITTERS ( (1887-1948) Merz pictures

-RAUL HAUSMANN (1886-1971)

-GUSTAV KLUTSIS (1895-1938)

-ERWIN BLUEMENFELD (1897-1969)

-ALEXANDER RODCHENKO (1891-1956)

-PAUL CITROEN (1896-1983)

-HANS APR (1886-1966)

-YVES TANGUY  (1900-1955) papiers decoupés, cadavre exquis

-MAN RAY  (1890-1976) photograms, rayographs, multiple exposures, photomontages

-MAX ERNST (1891-1976) La femme 100 tetes, Une semaine de bonté
-RICHARD HUELSENBECK (1892-1974)

-VALENTINE PENROSE (1898-1978)

-ROLAND PENROSE (1900-1984)

-JOSEPH CORNELL (1903-1972)

1950-2000

- ROBERT MOTHERWELL  (1915-1991)

-JIRI KOLAR (1914-2002)

-NANCY SPERO (1926-2009)

-EDUARDO PAOLLOZI (1924-2005)

-JAMES ROSENQUIST (1933-2017)

-ROBERT RAUCHENBERG (1925-2008)

-DAVID HOCKNEY  (1937-) photoworks, "joints"

-JASPER JONES (1930-)

-ROSALYN DREXLER (1926-)

-GUY DEBORD (1931-1994) +ASGER YORN (1914-1973) (Fin de Copenhague, Memoirs)

-JAMES ROSENQUIST (1933-2017)

- RICHARD HAMILTON (1922-2011)

-MARTHA ROSLER (1943-)

-MARI MAHR  (1941-) Photomontages and photo-collages

-ANNEGRETTE SOLTAU (1946-)

-PENNY SLINGER (1947-)

-JOHN STEZAKER (1949-)

-WOODY VASULKA  (1937-2019) The art of memory
-ΧΡΥΣΑ ΡΩΜΑΝΟΥ (1931-2006)

2000-2020

-LORNA SIMPSON (1960-)

-LANCE LETCHER (1962-)

-ASSUME VIVID ASTRO FOCUS

-THOMAS HIRSCHORN (1957-)

-WANGESHI MUTU (1972-)

-JESSE TREACE

-MARK BRADFORD (1961-)

-DAVID SALLE (1952-)

-NINA YUEN (1981-)

-JESSE DRAXLER (1983-)

-CATRIEN DE BLAWER (1969-)

-TAGEN DONOVAN

-ANTON WALKER

-LILAH FOWLER (1981-)

-JOE WEBB (1976-)

-TONY KENNEDY (Badgewearer) (1966-) 

-JULIE WEBER

-BEN LEWIS GILLES (1992-)

-DELILAH JONES

-SARAH EISENLOHR (1988-)

-MICHAEL TUNK (1984-)

-BRIAN OLSEN (1975-)

-ANTHONY ZINONOS

-ΛΕΝΑ ΑΘΑΝΑΣΟΠΟΥΛΟΥ (1979-)

-ΧΑΡΙΣ ΕΠΑΜΕΙΝΩΝΔΑ (1980-)

architects

-UGO LA PIETRA
-PETER AND ALISON SMITHSON

-GORDON MATTA-CLARK

-ARCHIGRAM

-ENRICO MIRAILLES

-SUPERSTUDIO

Bibliography
- Brandon Taylor, Collage, The Making of Modern art, Thames and Hudson, 2006 

-Freya Gowrley, Yuval Etgar, Cut and Paste, 400 years of Collage,  National Galleries of Scotland, 2019

-Peter Burger, Theory of the avant-garde, 1974 (σελ. 153-164)

-Jennifer A.E. Shields, Collage and architecture, Routledge, 2014