Architectural montage: a communication tool

Abstract

Montaging of artwork can be dated back to the invention of photography itself in the 1830's. The word "photomontage" was invented just after the First World War by the German art group, Dada. The French word "montage" literally means "fitting" or "assembly line". Sergei Tretyakov writing in 1936 about John Heartfield, a famous early 20th Century photomontageist, stated: "It is important to note that a photomontage need not necessarily be a montage of photos. It can be photo and text, photo and colour, photo and drawing." He even quoted Heartfield to support this definition: "A photograph can, by the addition of an unimportant spot of colour become a photomontage, a work of art of a special kind".(Ades P.16) American, William Reubin, in his catalogue for the 1968 New York Exhibition 'Dada, Surrealism and their Heritage' at the Museum of Modern Art, was stricter in his definition: "The most significant contribution of the Berlin group was the elaboration of the so-called photomontage, actually a photo-collage, since the image was not montaged in the darkroom."(Ades P.15)