Introduction

This chapter aims to distinguish between the concepts collage and montage, as defined across several media based on the type of artistic meaning they generate, heterogeneous and homogeneous, respectively, and not on the mechanical procedures they entail, “papery procedures” for collage, and technological and photographic for montage. It shows how visual collage was transformed into a new technique, photomontage, around 1919–1920, because of the ‘transparent’ nature of the photograph used in the incipient “photocollages,” which subsequently became true “photomontages.” Visual collages and photomontages were a preferred technique for the later avant-garde movements of the 1950s and 1960s, and performance acts and happenings seem to have taken the combination of art and reality specific of a visual collage to a new dimension. The chapter discusses some of Picasso’s collages and photomontages preceding the avant-garde and their pictorial nature based on iconic representation in the relevant sections. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.