![]() ![]() In the foreground of the office is the fragment of a secretary's arm, offering him his colorful coat, his way out of the drab world. His head is in his hands and a file cabinet keeps him company. The latest piece in the show is from the 1950's: a collage by George Grosz featuring a tiny black-and-white man sitting at a desk in the back of a giant black-and-white work cubicle. (Many of these artists cut and pasted their names as readily as they cut and pasted images.) It was made by Erwin Blumenfeld, who signed the work Blumenfeldada. The earliest work in the show is a 1920 photo-collage of boxers fighting over New York, an aerial shot of the city overlaid with silver print cut-outs of Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries, the Great White Hope, duking it out like gods in the sky. The gallery uses the German term ''fotomontage'' rather than ''photomontage'' to signify that the 30-odd works here are not photographs of collages but collages of photographs. The show, ''Fotomontage: European and Russian Collage, 1920-1950'' at Ubu Gallery in Manhattan, is a casual display of this pubescent preoccupation as practiced by some of its lesser lights. At its best, it is deft satire and at its worst, heavy-handed commentary. ![]() Whether in Germany, where it began with the Dada movement, or in Russia, where it found a political cause, or in France, where it linked up with Surrealism, it has remained resolutely immature, a rebellious art exulting in clever visual puns, overly significant juxtapositions and crazy assemblages of ill-fitting body parts. Though photomontage has traveled the world, it has never shaken its adolescent roots.
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