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Mustering Memory: George Grosz's Late Montages
Author(s) -
White Michael
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8365.12517
Subject(s) - george (robot) , memorialization , art , identity (music) , anticipation (artificial intelligence) , art history , visual arts , period (music) , aesthetics , computer science , law , artificial intelligence , political science
This essay challenges the received account of montage practice in the later career of George Grosz as the recovery of his dada identity and anticipation of pop art. Close examination of surviving works and the traces of the practice in his archives reveals montage making to be intimately connected to Grosz's exchanges with other artists over a long period and to his work in other media. Most significantly, montage making was deeply implicated with his own changing attitude towards the avant‐garde. Dada was not a stable concept that could be reinitiated untransformed, nor was montage a static category. An examination of Grosz's participation in the reception of practices such as collage and photomontage is coupled here with reflection on the relationship between montage and processes of memorialization and recollection to demonstrate their unexpected interconnection.