Collage in Artforum

Back in the '70's when I was working my way through college I had a job at a public library that subscribed to all of the art magazines. One I used to read there was Artforum. My first real look at the magazine in over 30 years was the March 2009 issue. I love the square (10.5x10.5 inch) format but more that that I love the coverage that was awarded the subject of mixed-media collage!

The first thing that caught my eye was an advertisement for Elliott Hundley's show running March 7 - April 4, 2009 at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. The ad illustration is fascinating, and so are "Some poured leaves over the dead girl"(image 6 of 12) and "Blinded" (image 8 of 12) which are two of the pieces on display. The underlying thread of this exhibition is the Greek tragedy Hekabe, a play written by Euripides.

Another advertisement seduced me with its flat files (would rather have them than a new car!) to visit Galerie Marie-Puck Broodthaers . I really like the first piece by Paul Van Hoyedonck for its composition of dots and spheres!

And I'm glad I checked out The Art Shack of Mike Shine featured in "Inside/Outside: Artist Environments" (5 March -24 May, 2009) at San Francisco's Museum of Craft and Folk Art. Otherwise I would have missed seeing the cool winged devil with "wheel of fortune" menu device! And the flip-comic book "Flotsam." Creative minds will come away thinking that your house is nowhere near weird enough. . .mine still needs lots of work.

Back to L.A. for the "Nine Lives" exhibit of Visionary Artists running 8 March - 31 May, 2009 at the Hammer Museum. The magazine advertisement is illustrated by Llyn Foulkes's negative-utopian mixed media "The Lost Frontier."

Then, a great article titled "Cut and Paste: Charlie White on the Collage Impulse Today." The development of the medium as influened by such social phenomena as children's TV (Sesame Street and The Electric Company), the first commercial Internet connection in 1988, Photoshop in 1990, HTML in 1993 and the Nikon SLR camera in 1999.

And another great article on the decollage of Jacques Villegle . He is catagorized an Affichiste--descended from the Cubists and Dadaists (Schwitters, above all) in making art that was a form of collage, having to do with Surrealist automatism, chance and anonymous collaboration. Villegle's work makes me want to lock up all my scissors to force myself to explore torn papers in all their random beauty.