Csaplár Ferenc szerk.: Lajos Kassák / The Advertisement and Modern Typography (1999)

The Photomontage

THE PHOTOMONTAGE It was about a decade ago that photomontages began to appear. Not as a representation of an artistic aspiration. Not as an expression of a new, consciously constructed theorybased art. They were just the opposite. They protested against all artistic aspirations: they were meant to subvert both the ideal and the material. We know the anti-literary campaigns led by Dadaists in fools' caps, with pipe and drum in hand, and it was out of this nihilist spirit that the photomontage was born. It appeared in the name of destruction, and it did not intend to represent a new, constructive spirit, as the public and a number of artists working in montage thought. From another perspective, however, people think of the montage as being brought to life by the commercial cunning of the heads of advertising agencies. But the first montages actually had nothing to do with advertising art as it is understood today. They started out in the name of negation; and we know that advertising art is an applied art; it is meant to speak with the flourish of trumpets. Its calling is to vaunt and praise. Eight or ten years ago the advertising executives would not even have talked to an "artist" offering them montages as a serious means of promoting a product. Tradesmen might have caught something of the destructive spirit of the montage, but it is more probable that their "artistic sensibilities" protested against the textural purity and objectivity of the montage. A conservative tradesman wants an "artistic" advertisement. If he spends money on it, let the advertisement be as beautiful and airy in spirit as a Raphael is. Nonetheless, the montage developed further. It was no longer satisfied with the analysis and the mocking of phenomena. As a result of both its material and its productive tendencies, it brought forth the positive meaning of its essence. It liberated itself from its dependent position, and appeared as an autonomous value. It was not yet a type of advertising art, but its clear image and aesthetic clarity called the attention of modern commerce to it. The montage necessarily marched into the field of advertisement simultaneously with the rapid development of technology and the diffusion of quality goods. The largest and most distinguished firms used the montage to carry out a good proportion of their advertising. And we have no doubt as to its aesthetic and propagative significance as opposed to individual graphic art. The montage began its triumphant march with business cards and brochures, and we even see them now on the advertisement pillars along the boulevards. This complete conquest of advertising is only hindered by the difficulties in producing montage in certain sizes. Special technical processes are necessary to make montage posters, and outmoded printing machinery cannot cope with that. But this is certainly a minor difficulty that little impedes the necessary acknowledgement of the montage. Furthermore, the development of the montage is far from exhausted, and to whatever extent it has been employed in advertising, it has not become the sole instrument of advertising. It is developing in two directions. Its ability to display things clearly has been monopolised by advertising, while its purely artistic significance is now being expanded by cinema. Cinema can only further its ability to synthesise by incorporating the montage. Sportcikkek (Sports Articles), Photomontage 1926 It was the Russians who discovered the cinematic significance of the montage, and they were the ones to extract the greatest value from it. Among European films, it was Ruttmann's The Symphony of the City that employed montage as a synthesising form of cinematic art. The montage, as we have thus seen, both as an autonomous art and as an applied art has, after only a few years of experimentation, found a way to develop freely in the fields of everyday life as well to develop as an art form aspiring to the highest ideals. Within the boundaries of this short article, we are primarily interested in the power of the montage to inform and influence us. All the more so because we can see those phenomena in the advertising success of the montage which, if not taken seriously and not corrected, might lead to its depravation and discrediting. By now, making a montage is an enjoyable activity, even easy, if one thinks of it as pasting photos or parts of photos beside and over each other. The majority of montage makers, unfortunately, see no better aim before them. They are given a flat surface and various photographs, and lacking anything better to do, they try to paste these photos on a clean and patient surface. At best, they compose the whole thing as painters do their pictures. We must, however, be clear about something: painting a picture and combining photographic material into sportcikkek 19