THURMAN ROTAN’S Skyscrapers, c.1932. Lavin, Annette Michelson, Christopher Phillips, Satly Stein, Matthew Teitelbaum and Margarita Tupitsyn. Montage: Thurman Rotan Montage and Modern Life: 1919-1942 was organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Bcston, and curated by Maud informing the modern world Vancouver Art Gailery documents crucial period in 20th century history - Montage and Modern Life: 1919-1942, af the Vancouver Art Gallery until Oct. 18. Ron Falcioni ART REVIEW ONSIDER THE fol- lowing scenario as content for a major curatorial survey: The cataclysm of the First World \War had buried forever the super- ficial complacency of /a belle ‘epoque, an era whose blind op- timism had spilled over into the first decade of the 20th century relatively intact. The spectre Marx and Engels had proclaimed was haunting Europe gave rise to the ‘‘new messiah’ of Communism where das kapital was least entrenched. The period between the world wars was one of disillusionment, disintegration and desperate reorganization at various social levels: political, ideological, eco- nomic and artistic. New technologies were indis- criminately placing the machineries of propaganda and mass destruction at the disposal of unenlightened minds. The economic and moral deterioration that beset Germany in its struggle to accommodate the impossible demands of its victors after the First World War fore- shadowed and ultimately triggered the cathartic collapse of interna- tional economics that resulted in the Great Depression. The proliferation of authoritarianism which subse- quently engendered the Second World War clearly arose like a malevolent phoenix out of the self-same fire of xenophobic na- tionalism that had spawned the First World War. \i few could read the signs, none could avert the consequences. But, as always, the patterns of human folly, as immune to com- mon sense as to prophecy, were amply reflected in the popular art of the times. Montage and Modern Life: 1979-1942, the exhibit currently completing its run at the Van- couver Art Gallery. provides major documentation of that crucial period in 20th century history. Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, this is a comprehensive exhibition that explores all facets of montage within the context of the historic era specified. Simply defined,montage is the technique of combining mostly — but not always — photographic images from differing and some- times incongruous sources to make statements that are more often forceful and arresting than subtle. In other words, it is a medium ideally calculated to inform and direct rather than to entertain. A wide variety of applications are explored in this presentation. ranging from advertising and pro- paganda in poster design and magazine layout to popular enter- tainment in the cinema and actual reconstructions (ouch!) of Suprematist furniture designed in 1925 by Rodchenko for a Soviet ““worker'’s club.’ Although the origins of the mon- tage can be traced back through Italian Futurism and Synthetic Cubism to 19th century trick photography and other photographic amusements,”’ it is the Berlin Dadaists, Raoul Hausmann. Hannah Hoch, George Grosz and John Heartfield, who are generally accredited with the inventicen of the term “photomontage” if not the tech- nique itself in its widest applica- tion. Unfortunately not a great dea! of attention is devoted to its Dadaist origins in this exhibit nor to its brief lyrical utilization by Max Ern- st and other surrealists, though such works as Bauhaus instructor, Herbert Bayer’s Self Portrait, Lone- ly Metropolitan and Lange Radio Advertisement certainly come close. On the other hand we are ex- posed to the largest accumulation we are ever likely to see in Van- couver of works by such acclaim- ed Soviet masters as Gustav Klut- sis, Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky. Montage was a medium im- mediately seized upon by the engineers of the new Soviet socie- ty because, in Lissitzky’s words, it was “recognized for its inherent Capacity to order, organize and activate the consciousness.” lf it was largely on the achieve- ment of these three artists that the first generation of Soviet citizens was weaned, it was on the devel- opment of the cutting and editing techniques of cinematic montage as practised by Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein that the most dy- namic advances in the evolution of the motion pictures were initi- ated. Such rare fiims as Vertov's Kino Pravada, 1922, or his The Man With the Movie Camera, 1929, and Eisenstein’s Strike, 1925, and October, 1928, presented by Pacific Cinematheque in conjunc- tion with this exhibition, testify to the importance of such develop- ments in film while instilling in the exhibit’s audience an overwhelm- ing impression of the milieu out of which montage was born. The full force of photomontage as a satirical weapon — especially as wielded in the castigation of Naziism — is implemented in the wide selection of meticulous works by John Heartfield, who perfected his compelling artistry in the 30s with the covers and il- lustrations produced for the Ger- man Communist magazine, A/Z. This body of work provides a powerful condemnation of the post-Weimar Reich whose mastery of mass mesmerism was aptly em- bodied in Leni Reifenstahl’s 1935 masterpiece of cinematic pro- paganda, Triumph of the Wili, shown in somewhat truncated from by Pacific Cinematheque in late September. Although numerous American instances of the medium are rep- resented — the most noteworthy being the posters of Lester Beall and the photomontage illustration of Gordon Costner — it is obvious that American practice was, for the most part, belated, highly derivative and primarily commer- cial. Only in Pacific Cinematheque’s screenings of Buster Keaton’s silent masterpiece, The General, and Busby Berkley’s musical ex- travaganza, Gold Diggers of 1933, did the real contribution of the Americans to the development of montage become apparent, Typi- cally the motivation was to enter- tain. On the whole, the importance of Montage and Modern Life can not be underestimated. it is a rare and exemplary exhibit whose real value lies not so much in the proliferation of unique ar- tifacts it embodies in its explora- tion of a single if ubiquitous tech- nique of 20th century art as in its ability to evoke an era fast fading from living memory, an era which, in view of the perennial frailties of human nature, neither we nor our children would do well to forget. fancouver Seniors’ Centre . 695: 214t Street, West Vancouver 809559 for more details. uN