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

The Photomontage

a new and significant whole by selecting, dimming and highlighting are altogether different. The artist attempts, through colour, sound and form, to manifest, to express some inner feeling, some experience not yet had, some suppressed desire, or an idea that cannot be realised in everyday life. Each kind of artistic material demands a different language of form; all artists have to observe the laws of their materials. The photographs before the montage maker are nothing other than materials. But the material of the painter and the material of the montage maker essentially differ. The essence of the painter's material is colour and form, while the essence of the montage maker's material is threefold: colour, form and the rational. In contrast to the former, this is partly an advantage and partly a handicap. A good montage can obviously be made only by a person who is aware of the special nature of his material and who, by way of his human capacity and skill, is capable of mastering, shaping and harmonising this material to express the values of the creative process. Rationality in the material of the montage is equivalent in significance to the raw material in the work of an architect. This is a great binding force, but it is also a necessary supporting pillar of this creative form. Most montage makers are not clear about the nature of their material, and their work is often no more than a senseless game or a gaudy mixture of ineffective commonplaces. Both results are contrary to the original aim of the montage. In the course of its development, the montage has not forsaken its tendentious aspirations, its stress on tendencies of rationality illustrated by motifs of rationality. A painter may aspire to abstraction or the absolutely artistic, but a montage maker must, due to the very nature of his material, also undertake rational solutions in his work since it is this threefold material content (colour, form and the rational) that places the montage ahead of any bravura by a painter or graphic artist in advertising. In writing about photomontages, we must also mention the relationship between its photographic and type material. The primary material of a montage is the photographic, and type merely plays a supplementary and secondary role. It is theoretically impossible to define what kind of type we ought to use consistently. Practice has proved we can use either positive or negative, either coloured or black. This is to be determined in each case by the stable or dynamic, light or dark nature of the montage. We can however lay down a general rule: the form of the type must be of a calm, neutral form in comparison to the montage. I have attempted to put together a meaningful definition of the montage. For a detailed discussion of this rich and multifaceted topic, an extended, analytical study would be needed. REKLÁMÉLET, MAY 1930, PP. 7-8. Lajos Gró, Az orosz filmművészet (Russian Cinema) (Budapest: Munka, 1931), cover, 197x145 mm 20