CUT.PASTE.RESIST.REDUX

Why collage was an ideal art form for R.M. Vaughan

"You know I love 'rough art'", R.M. Vaughan, Personal communication, February, 2020.

According to R.M., in "this discontent era such as ours, where people face daily crises and looming environmental and social injustices, collage as a form of activist expression is back." R.M. Vaughan liked lists as explanatory exercises and as an accessible means to address what might seem complicated while profound. In the spirit of R.M.’s approach to explanation, I have made a list of what Cut Paste Resist and collage meant for R.M. The following qualities of collage that R.M. held dear make it an ideal form of art for this time:

A) Collage punctures expectations

When Richard approached me to co-curate Cut Paste Resist, he knew we would see ‘eye to eye’ because he liked to puncture, while I like to disrupt. R.M. liked to puncture pretense, especially artistic and academic pretense. Both of us like to disrupt the taken-for-granted and the big claim to an ideal form. Disruption for me is a bit a safer concept than puncture because it has academic merit and you can find it referred to in social and political theory. Richard liked to puncture my point of view too (while being fully versed in social political and artistic theory).

B) Collage lacks purity and perfection

R.M. distrusted the claim to perfection, such as, the perfect idea, or the perfectly executed artwork. He hated art forms that were rendered so “pure” that they became lifeless and listless. Perfection that had no clear humane personal or social referent to Richard was simply lazy. Most of all, he hated ontology that referred to itself as perfect or pure in order to be self-gratifying or in the service of self-promotion. Collage is anything but pure. The voice of the artist can be faltering, the images can be referential, and the art form can look rough.

C) Collage stands on its own merit

A disagreement I had with R.M. while curating Cut Paste Resist was about listing the source of the collage. As an academic, I wanted to name the artist’s institutional association and role.  For R.M., to start naming factors such as institutional affiliation entailed the search for referents to value of the collage beyond the work itself. It was a process of introducing troubling notions of hierarchy, and to over code the work with other ways to value it. R. M. wanted only to name the artist, the title, and the country. That’s it and that was good enough. Collage allowed for political comment and challenge but it did not have to refer back to the big theorists, have a rationale behind the expression or be socially located to give it status.

D) Anyone can do collage

For R. M., Cut Paste Resist was to be a happy mix of established artists as well as "every kind of artist and non-artist." R.M. liked collage because contributors could afford it. He liked collage because someone might do it in their kitchen or their bedroom. As he said: "Collage is an art form available to all. You cut, you paste. Everything after those two actions is yours to control, shape, and share." In this manner, R.M. was a man of the people; a true social democrat.

E) Collage is messy

He loved the potential messiness of the collage with its multiple incongruent sources, its composition from daily objects or images—objects, as he said, one can find around the house. He loved the possibility that ultimately both the work and the show as a whole just might look messy. Collage with its ragged edges and its loosely connected referents within a single artwork is queer. Even the rules of the show had to allow for messiness. He did not want a stringent, rule bound or institutionally driven principles of curation. If you submitted the collage you got in, as long as the collage was not hateful or intentionally hurtful, it was posted.

F) Craft as Voice/Resistance

R.M. loved craft. He liked to be able to see the hand of the maker and the personal idiosyncrasy of each art piece. Collage as craft was a precious gift for R.M., since the way an artist pieced it together combined with what personal or social issue they focussed on, displayed their singular expression. Resistance was about the hand-crafted voice of each person with all their frustrations and hopes.

- Ken Moffatt