of the images, the Surrealist artists hid them.
Instead of cutting and pasting images, they manipu-
lated their photographs in the darkroom before
printing them, or they used tricks of light and sha-
dow to present fantasy as reality. Both Andre ́Ker-
te ́sz, in hisDistortionseries (1933), and Man Ray, in
his numerous photographs of the nude female
torso, used the photograph to transform the nude
female form into something else. Man Ray’s
famous Untitled (1927) endows his model with
tiger stripes by way of the shadows cast by a gauze
curtain. Their artworks present a manipulated
world as if it were a real one. The intention here is
similar to that of Dada photomontage, to induce an
estrangement in the viewer regarding his own world
and his certainty about it. However, the Surrealists’
interest in the interior life, in dreams and night-
mares, and in psychoanalysis led them to favor
these techniques over the more direct ones that
had been used by the Berlin Dadaists.
Both of these avant-garde groups used montage
techniques in their art to produce a sense of shock
and estrangement in their viewers in an attempt to
make art into a form of social praxis—that is, to
fuse art with everyday life. Yet when works from the
two groups are compared, there is little chance that
they will be confused. Montage techniques remained
an enduring feature of art for nearly a century pre-
cisely because of their great flexibility. They allow
the artist to create an artwork that has a clear and
effective message and to do so in a highly individual
way. Montage has often, for these reasons and
others, been used by those who make political or
social statements with their art. Montage was used
by the avant-gardes of the left. Many in both the
Dada and Surrealist groups had ties—though often
tenuous ones—to the Communist party. However,
montage is by no means the exclusive province of
those on the left. It has also been used quite effec-
tively by avant-gardists of the right, such as the
Italian Futurists, whose interest in collage and mon-
tage strategies following Cubism stemmed from
their advocacy of speed and technology.
Soon after its acceptance by the avant-gardes as
a legitimate artistic practice, montage’s flexibility
and power was redirected with new vigor toward
non-artistic purposes, particularly in advertising
and propaganda. In the United States, montage
has been used in these arenas in a much more
overt way than it has been in art or literature. The
appeal is nearly identical: montage provides a way
for a message—whether commercial or ideologi-
cal—to be presented in a way that makes a strong
impression while giving the appearance that the
viewer is making independent connections between
disparate images rather than having a viewpoint or
opinion forced upon her. When discussing propa-
ganda, it is often difficult to separate it from works
that would be considered ‘‘art,’’ since many mon-
tages that were designed as works of art have also
had a propagandistic impulse behind them.
A significant part of the appeal of montage
throughout its history has been the ease with
which artists are able to use it to combine avant-
garde and mass cultures. It breaks down the bar-
riers between high and low art, as well as those
between art and commerce and/or propaganda.
There was a rich tradition of this kind of artwork
in the former Soviet Union, where many artists
affiliated with the Communist party used montage
to political effect. For instance, in the poster by El
Lissitzky, The Current is Switched On (1932),
photomontage is used to convey the industrial
power of the Soviet Union as it provides literal
(electric) power to its citizens. At the same time,
scope and scale are manipulated to attribute a
mythological largeness to the figure of Stalin,
whose head and shoulders loom large in the right
half of the image. The left upper quadrant of the
poster shows an enormous hand switching on elec-
tric power. Both of these unnaturally large human
figures are juxtaposed against a background of a
nighttime cityscape, lit with an abundance of lights,
including spotlights. The effect is not a romanti-
cized one, but rather one of practical force. This is
a city for workers.
In the United States, similarly, montage has been
used as a form of propaganda. One well-known
example is the large photomontage that was a
part of theRoad to Victoryexhibition, organized
for the Museum of Modern Art from 21 May to 4
October, 1942. This exhibit featured one large wall
of photomontage, where an enlarged photograph
of soldiers marching to battle is juxtaposed with
photographs of ‘‘typical’’ American couples, young
and old, in the city and the country. The message
seems fairly clear: the thousands of anonymous
soldiers marching into battle during World War II
are ensuring America’s victory, and thus the con-
tinuation of the American way of life. Subtlety is
not a common feature of montage.
The interaction between advertising and montage
has also been an enduring and fruitful one. Many of
photomontages of the historical avant-gardes—
Dada, Futurism, and Surrealism—were born from
this exchange. Not only did artists like Ho ̈ch use
materials from mass culture, but many of them,
such as Heartfield worked as commercial artists
and turned their montages into posters or post
cards rather than exhibiting them in traditionalMONTAGE