ABSTRACT
The simplest, most accessible way to characterize collage is as follows: it combines images, whether visual, graphemic, or both, with an interruption in continuity, a "cut" of some sort. That is to say, it is a form of juxtaposition. In collage, the whole must exceed the sum of its parts, and power derives in part from the degree of juxtaposition and disruption within a given work. This juxtaposition can be used to guide perception and shape knowledge, or something that feels like knowledge, such as prejudice or ideological certitude. A multiplicity of images are grouped together, and by their proximity illuminate a subject, incite a feeling, or teach a lesson in a way that no single aspect—or even each component aspect, taken singly—could. The theory of the ideogram is itself a kind of collage or, perhaps, a conceptual assemblage. The ideogrammic method, by contrast, strives to produce knowledge of the way that the natural world works.
