A selection from our personal archives: George Grosz – The Musterbook: Textures | 1940–1958
Undated scrapbook
Page selection
This essay challenges the received account of montage practice in the later career of George Grosz as the recovery of his dada identity and anticipation of pop art. Close examination of surviving works and the traces of the practice in his archives reveals montage making to be intimately connected to Grosz’s exchanges with other artists over a long period and to his work in other media. Most significantly, montage making was deeply implicated with his own changing attitude towards the avant-garde. Dada was not a stable concept that could be reinitiated untransformed, nor was montage a static category. An examination of Grosz’s participation in the reception of practices such as collage and photomontage is coupled here with reflection on the relationship between montage and processes of memorialization and recollection to demonstrate their unexpected interconnection. (from Michael White)
