Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book talks about juxtaposition, disruption, and a fundamental sense of anti-narrativity: these factors together made collage "the single most revolutionary formal innovation in artistic representation to occur in the twentieth century". It presents a progressive, threefold argument, whose aspects are interrelated yet distinct. This argument is as follows: collage destroys the effective barriers between the literary and the nonliterary; collage is importantly anti-narrative, both in terms of the presentation of its content and in its formal structures; collage is favorable for the transmission of political critique. The desire for unmediated expression and the ideal of a world free from hierarchical relationships—whether expressed in government or grammar—is the key to the revolutionary potential of collage. The case studies in the book address a wider spectrum of collage art and artists, whether that is due to questions of media, artistic style, or personal identity.