Photomontage Essay

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Collage and photomontage can be interpreted as a highly effective technique of the Avant Garde movement, which questioned, critiqued, and dismantled the status of classical art, as well as the upper class, bourgeois society of the early twentieth century. Artists including Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Kazimir Malevich, Raoul Hausmann, and Hannah Hoch used different styles and aesthetic qualities, to portray different messages about modern life. Although the different artists are from different stylistic periods, the overarching theme of wanting to reject the traditional and the bourgeois and capitalist ideals can be seen across each style and each artist’s work. A collage a work of art which is made up of a collection of various materials, including paper and occasionally ready-made objects. A photomontage is the assembling of various photographs, ridding itself of a complex pictorial space or any formal arrangement. The early Berlin Dadaists began using the term photomontage to distinguish themselves, as well as distance themselves from traditional art . Even the name of the medium, photomontage, …show more content…

Braque was one of the first artists to incorporate everyday materials, also known as ready-made objects, into art. Braque has layered different pieces of paper, cardboard and news paper clippings, constructing the shape of a pipe and the body of a violin. He has also done some shading in charcoal in the background, making vague geometric shapes. The work has no sense of space or background, and although parts of the work overlap each other, there is no depth or three dimensionality. Braque makes several sexual puns in his work. This was very common in cubist collage. The title of Le Quotidien has been cut to only read “Le Qu”, meaning ass. The pipe was also a common term for a penis at this time, the violin’s shape represents a woman’s breasts and the hole in the violin represents the

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