john Stezaker

In this essay I act as an art theorist/critic as well as philosopher. The two notions of the Harmanian object that I get most out of at present is its strange formulation of unity (the possibility of a real, unified and intentional object) and a notion of the objects withdrawal or withheld nature (which I crudely turn into the notion of absence - as that which is not present in our ongoing re-formulations of objects). Now, it seems to me that through my brief research into O.O.O inspired artworks, such artworks show the opposite inclination; 1) to revitalise the lurking horrific reality of objects in everyday life (presence). 2) that we must go to the farthest depths of the universe to acquire ‘objects’ that appear alien to humans or could be hypostatised to exist without, before or after humans (difference). I have no interest in these aesthetic concerns (I do not find a piece of the moon any more or less philosophically complex than a sandwich).  Both are more than the relations of access we infer from them, both are more than the components made-up of them, and both exceed their outward effects. Also, I would argue that positioning the object outside of thought and/or human existence in this way is an idealist experiment analogous to the question “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”. O.O.O is not a human-world philosophy nor is it a philosophy of human skepticism, it is a philosophy of multiple individual objects (and also, I don't even know how my own body or thoughts exist, let alone a tree in the woods).
I think it is possibly more difficult to illustrate the notions of unity and absence in Harman’s work in art, than that of difference and presence. I have attempted to do so through two artworks. One is Vito Acconci’s ‘Room Piece’ (1970) and the other is John Stezaker’s ‘Mack’ (2007).

Link to lecture video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3I1oqUZ_BA

Synopsis:

The introduction of collage to modern art shortly after the turn of the twentieth century revolutionised both the material and conceptual conditions for art making henceforth. But while collage initially emerged as a way to break the rules of traditional painting and monolithic sculpture, the term itself soon became the subject of debate and controversy, raising questions about its role as mediator between popular visual culture and high art. And indeed, by the mid 1970s, collage had transformed from a defined artistic practice to a sweeping visual dialect that extends across disciplines; doing so at the risk of undermining its potency as an artistic strategy.

This lecture sets out to explore several of the physical, ideological and historical extremities of collage through the prism of four artworks by Max Ernst, René Magritte, John Stezaker and Sherrie Levine. Operating in two pivotal moments in the history of collage (Ernst and Magritte in the 1920s, Levine and Stezaker in the 1970s) each one of these artists attempted to redefine the limits of collage by replacing material and technical questions such as 'what collages should look like?', or 'what they are made of?', with a strategic approach centred on what collages do?

The Ends of Collage, was an exhibition that spread over three platforms, each offering a different perspective from which to review the medium of collage and its legacies. At Luxembourg & Dayan, New York, the exhibition was dedicated to some of the technical preconditions of collage (variety of cuts, masks and windows, image manipulations and the notion of ‘edge’). At Luxembourg & Dayan, London, the show shifted the focus towards some of the major themes that characterise the medium (fantasy, the domestic sphere, dismemberment of the social or private body, and the mobility of images). The third platform continues to live on the pages of a printed publication that brings together various theoretical motivations that precipitated the emergence of collage at the beginning of the twentieth century along with those that expanded the medium beyond its traditional limits with the emergence of digital cultures in the late 1970s.

The title chosen for the exhibition, The Ends of Collage, refers both literally and metaphorically to the place where collage fulfils its calling — at the ends or edges of pictures and fragments, where separate worlds come together or break apart from one another. It also suggests an historical paradigm, where collage is considered as a medium that existed in the so called ‘age of mechanical reproduction’ and has now been overcome by the new logic of the digital age.

The photocollages of John Stezaker pose eminent problems of image-theory. Their structural ambivalence is produced by the clash of two images in the continuum of one. In doing so they generate a plural picture combination, which questions the unity of the image and its limitations. The Heterogeneity of Stezakers collages is supported by the medial and aesthetic complexity of his source-material-mostly postcards, Filmstills and publicity-shots of actors and actresses long forgotten. Using the metaphor of the graft, which originates in writings of Jacques Derrida, an ambivalent term of image should be proposed , which focusses on differences, upheavals and the interconnections between the images.

John Stezakers Foto-Collagen formulieren bildtheoretische Fragestellungen. Sie generieren dabei aus dem für die Collage typischen Zusammenwirken von zwei Bildern im Kontinuum eines Bildes eine strukturelle Ambivalenz. Hier-durch werden sie zu pluralen Bildkombinationen, die die Einheit des Bildes so-wie dessen Begrenzung grundlegend infrage stellen. Die Heterogenität der Col-lagen Stezakers wird dabei unterstützt durch die dem Ausgangsmaterial Post-karte, Film-Still und Schauspielerporträt selbst innewohnenden ästhetischen und medialen Problemfelder. Mittels der vor allem auf Jacques Derrida zurück-gehenden Metapher der Pfropfung soll ein ambivalenter, auf Differenzen und Brüchen, sowie auf zwischenbildlichen Verschmelzungen basierender Bildbe-griff entworfen werden.
Florian Flömer: Collage als Pfropfung IMAGE | Ausgabe 33 | 01/2021 40

The Ends of Collage was an exhibition that spread over three platforms, each offering a different perspective from which to review the medium of collage and its legacies. At Luxembourg & dayan, New York, the exhibition was dedicated to some of the technical preconditions of collage (variety of cuts, masks and windows, image manipulations and the notion of ‘edge’). At Luxembourg & dayan, London, the exhibition shifted the focus towards some of the major themes that characterise the medium (fantasy, the domestic sphere, dismemberment of the social or private body, and the mobility of images). The third platform continues to take place on the pages of a printed publication, edited by Yuval Etgar, the curator of the exhibition, which brings together various theoretical motivations that precipitated the emergence of collage at the beginning of the twentieth century along with those that expanded the medium beyond its traditional limits with the emergence of digital cultures in the late 1970s.

The title chosen for the exhibition, The Ends of Collage, refers both literally and metaphorically to the place where collage fulfils its calling — at the ends or edges of pictures and fragments, where separate worlds come together or break apart from one another. It also suggests an historical paradigm, where collage is considered as a medium that existed in the so called ‘age of mechanical reproduction’ and has now been overcome by the new logic of the digital age.