ONE COULD ARGUE that the current financial meltdown has been lurking behind every corner—that with each new height of global wealth, voices of reason warned that the bottom would surely fall out. Perhaps one such bellwether was the return of certain modernist strategies in art. Although most recuperations of this sort have been merely decorative or nostalgic, a few have been symptomatic of a desire to confront art’s embeddedness within political crisis, market fluctuation, and consumer taste. Collage—the medium of modernist shock par excellence—has made one such return: Though never completely absent from contemporary art practices, collage had become a lesser-used aesthetic language during the past three decades. Spurred back into play precisely amid dire political circumstances, images of terror, and an unending war, collage seems to be riding a wave of political corruption, shrapnel, and personal loss to reemerge as a legitimate contemporary language. But the manner in which collage can make meaning—in an atmosphere now dense in remixes, mash-ups, and shuffles—will be very different than it was in times of crisis past. Today, collage must confront its status as a form that has risen rapidly in postwar popular culture, making it a natural impulse for all media. It is not only a common response to the layers of information that burden us but also an invisible force that reorganizes histories, logs, and lineages to be more readily accessible—now an everyday necessity. I would like to take collage’s recent resurgence in art as an occasion to revisit and update its related popular histories—a shifting story, one that hovers at the fluid seam of art, politics, technology, and mass media. FROM THE INVENTION OF CUBIST COLLAGE to Martha Rosler’s first devastating images in 1967, collage spanned an era of political revolution, war, and cultural upheaval—a period that was defined by the twentieth century’s mechanical conditions and that predated the widespread digitization of media (figure 1). With the Dadaists’ embrace and expansion of the practice, as well as their development of photomontage, collage was able to explode both art history and popular culture into particulate matter and open up territories of visual experimentation. Dadaists such as Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, and Kurt Schwitters relied on violent gestures, not only entailing the willful detonation of historical narratives but also splintering the imagistic conventions of the moment (see Biro article, figure 6). These acts of disassembling and reassembling resulted in a visual language of extreme plasticity, a plasticity that could (and would for more than fifty years) take on multiple forms and opposing positions, depending on how it was used and whom it was meant to serve: Compare John Heartfield’s vehemently antifascist photomontages adorning the cover of the Workers’ Pictorial Newspaper (AIZ) to Herbert Bayer’s pro-fascist montages in the New Line (Die neue Linie) Our thanks to Charlie White and Artforum for permission to reproduce this article, originally published in March 2009, pages 210–15. The text remains formatted as in the original, the illustrations have been reduced due to copyright restrictions.

中文翻译：

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剪切和粘贴：今天拼贴冲动的查理怀特

有人可能会说，当前的金融危机已经潜伏在每一个角落——随着全球财富的每一个新高度，理性的声音警告说，底部肯定会跌落。也许这样的风向标之一是某些现代主义艺术策略的回归。尽管大多数这类康复只是装饰性的或怀旧的，但也有少数表现出渴望面对艺术在政治危机、市场波动和消费者品味中的嵌入性。拼贴画——现代主义卓越的震撼媒介——已经取得了这样的回报：虽然在当代艺术实践中从未完全缺席，但在过去的三十年里，拼贴画已成为一种较少使用的审美语言。正是在可怕的政治环境、恐怖形象和无休止的战争中，才被刺激重新发挥作用，拼贴似乎正乘着政治腐败、碎片和个人损失的浪潮重新成为一种合法的当代语言。但是拼贴创造意义的方式——在现在充满混音、混搭和洗牌的氛围中——将与过去危机时期大不相同。今天，拼贴必须正视其作为一种在战后流行文化中迅速崛起的形式的地位，使其成为所有媒体的自然推动力。它不仅是对给我们带来负担的信息层的常见反应，而且还是一种无形的力量，可以重组历史、日志和谱系，以便更容易访问——现在是日常必需品。我想以拼贴艺术最近在艺术领域的复兴为契机，重新审视和更新其相关的流行历史——一个不断变化的故事，一个徘徊在艺术、政治、技术和大众媒体。从立体主义拼贴画的发明到 1967 年玛莎·罗斯勒的第一幅毁灭性图像，拼贴画跨越了一个政治革命、战争和文化动荡的时代——这个时期由 20 世纪的机械条件所定义，早于媒体的广泛数字化（图1）。随着达达主义者对这种实践的接受和扩展，以及他们对蒙太奇的发展，拼贴能够将艺术史和流行文化爆炸成微粒，并开辟视觉实验的领域。Raoul Hausmann、Hannah Höch 和 Kurt Schwitters 等达达主义者依赖于暴力的姿态，不仅需要故意引爆历史叙事，而且还破坏了当下的想象惯例（见 Biro 文章，图 6）。这些拆卸和重新组装的行为产生了一种极端可塑性的视觉语言，这种可塑性可以（并且将持续五十多年）呈现多种形式和相反的位置，这取决于它的使用方式和服务对象：将 John Heartfield 装饰工人画报 (AIZ) 封面的强烈反法西斯蒙太奇与 Herbert Bayer 在 New Line (Die neue Linie) 中的亲法西斯蒙太奇进行比较 感谢 Charlie White 和 Artforum 允许转载这篇最初发表的文章2009 年 3 月，第 210-15 页。文本格式保持原样，由于版权限制，插图已被减少。一种可以（并且将持续 50 多年）采取多种形式和对立立场的可塑性，取决于它的使用方式和服务对象：比较约翰·哈特菲尔德（John Heartfield）在工人画报封面上强烈反法西斯的蒙太奇照片(AIZ) 对 Herbert Bayer 在 New Line (Die neue Linie) 中的亲法西斯蒙太奇 (Die neue Linie) 表示感谢，感谢 Charlie White 和 Artforum 允许转载这篇最初于 2009 年 3 月发表的文章，第 210-15 页。文本格式保持原样，由于版权限制，插图已被减少。一种可以（并且将持续 50 多年）采取多种形式和对立立场的可塑性，取决于它的使用方式和服务对象：比较约翰·哈特菲尔德（John Heartfield）在工人画报封面上强烈反法西斯的蒙太奇照片(AIZ) 对 Herbert Bayer 在 New Line (Die neue Linie) 中的亲法西斯蒙太奇 (Die neue Linie) 表示感谢，感谢 Charlie White 和 Artforum 允许转载这篇最初于 2009 年 3 月发表的文章，第 210-15 页。文本格式保持原样，由于版权限制，插图已被减少。将 John Heartfield 装饰工人画报 (AIZ) 封面的强烈反法西斯蒙太奇与 Herbert Bayer 在 New Line (Die neue Linie) 中的亲法西斯蒙太奇进行比较 感谢 Charlie White 和 Artforum 允许转载这篇最初发表的文章2009 年 3 月，第 210-15 页。文本格式保持原样，由于版权限制，插图已被减少。将 John Heartfield 装饰工人画报 (AIZ) 封面的强烈反法西斯蒙太奇与 Herbert Bayer 在 New Line (Die neue Linie) 中的亲法西斯蒙太奇进行比较 感谢 Charlie White 和 Artforum 允许转载这篇最初发表的文章2009 年 3 月，第 210-15 页。文本格式保持原样，由于版权限制，插图已被减少。