| This dissertation undertakes, broadly, to theorize the persistence and success of collage in artworks past the initial avant-garde moment of its inception, and, specifically, to study individual instances of collage in the literary and visual arts in their formal, thematic, historical, and cultural contexts. I argue that collage, defined as any art form that utilizes disjunctive cuts in material, has represented not only an avenue of formal innovation, but also a pathway to utopian political and social thought. Beginning with a theoretical consideration of the writings of Ezra Pound and Walter Benjamin, and continuing with a series of case studies on figures including Marianne Moore, Muriel Rukeyser, Robert Duncan, Jess, Joseph Cornell, Bruce Conner, Langston Hughes, Nathaniel Mackey, Susan Howe, and Paul D. Miller (D. J. Spooky), this dissertation show how collage allows for the reader/viewer to "see differently," leading to a revolution of the senses.; On the basis of these case studies, I contend that a broad range of textual and visual artists used collage in works that were politically or socially motivated, and have continued to do so into the contemporary era. Though the European avant-garde groups under whose auspices collage first flourished did have explicit political connections (on both the right and the left), the larger literary and artistic movements now known as "modernism" have often been characterized as elitist and apolitical. And yet, since the 1920s, a diverse spectrum of American artists have included collage as an essential part of their practice of making politically or socially motivated art. For these artists, collage's form (cutting and pasting, or its equivalent) is essential to the political content that they wish to express, in varieties both utopian and apocalyptic. Thus, collage has persisted well past its original avant-garde moment to become a staple not only of art but also of the mass media. Recovering the shock of recognition that collage initially provoked, as well as its visibility (in the face of near ubiquity in advertising and film), is the purpose of this project. |
