Front Page

I hate collage because everyone and anyone can do it. If you can cut and paste, then you can call yourself an artist. It's easier than having to learn how to draw or paint. Collage techniques can even be applied to sculpture and installations. All that is needed are things that can be assembled. It's basically the art of gluing. At least that is what collage means in French.

       Collage made its first appearance in the Fine Arts in France during the Cubist period as "papier collee". In this classic form, photographs, paper and/or fabric were pasted on a backing, usually a painting, Eventually the painting part disappeared. Collage began to stand on its own terms and subsumed painting altogether. And that is also why I hate collage.

       Recently, looking on my bookshelves for something to read that I hadn't read before, I reluctantly took out Hugh Kenner's Joyce's Voices. I don't even know how I happened to own this book but it has been on my shelves for ages. I come from the generation that had its idols and, like Picasso among artists, James Joyce was a major deity among the literati. Everyone I knew had read Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and The Dubliners. Parts of Ulysses were and are still well-known but nobody I knew had managed to read Finnegan's Wake. Despite having seen two unsuccessful films inspired by Ulysses, participating in several annual Joyce's Days, and reading Nora by Brenda Maddox, for the life of me, I couldn't fathom Joyce's reputation.

       Kenner opened my ears, and as a result, also my eyes. I learned that Ulysses is a collage of many voices. Some of the voices are private, some public, some quotes, some dreams and some the author, as well as the narrator and the characters. Like in Homer, Kenner points out that we hear the "Singer, Man, and Muse".

       Joyce was writing Ulysses in the same period that Picasso and Braque were inventing Cubism. Cubism synthesized multiple images into one painting. Not too long afterwards, Sergei Eisenstein's theory of montage (Fr. montage: putting together) explicated how film makers can put independent shots together to create movies that tell stories that are not simple linear narratives and could serve propaganda purposesi. In poetry, Pound's Ideogrammic Method offered another way of "putting together". Picasso, Eisenstein, Pound and Joyce-it seems that the Big Art Discovery of the Early Twentieth Century was Collage!!!

       Actually collage is ancient. It is only the conscious recognition of it as an accepted tool of communication that is modern. Today, it is no longer a process that is practiced solely by artists. Everybody uses some aspect of collage for their websites, blogs, and presentations. Collage is so ubiquitous that it is easy to be unaware of it. New materials keep being tossed into the mix. Whereas, in the past, the mix was used to bake a recognizable and edible cake (story, poem, painting, etc.), the contemporary approach is to let the viewers and readers make the cake, or whatever they want, out of the mix.

       I realize now that I can't hate collage any more. Apparently collage is not at fault, just the collagist. I have to face the fact that it is today's lingua franca. As for me, I am thinking that it's time that schools offer classes in CSL (Collage as a Second Language).

Rudy Scherreiks

Notes From Abroad

Aegean fantasies, the cultural art of the meze, and an impression of the new Acropolis Museum
Misty images of ancient Greek sailing ships, of Odysseus on the helm of his ship, and of cargoes of amphorae filled with wine and oil destined for ports in Asia Minor and Attica come into my minds-eye when I think of the Aegean Sea. My wife and I often sail a part of the western Aegean Sea in our small boat between the Northern Sporades and the island of Ewoia. Our fantasies are inspired with the knowledge that during archaic times important trade routes between Athens and Asia-Minor crossed the relatively protected Sea of Ewoia where we may have criss-crossed the wakes of some of those ancient Thousand Ships of the Iliad that were launched for the Helena's sake. Numerous shipwrecks with their sunken cargoes of amphorae have been found in this part of the Aegean sea. Especially noteworthy are two masterpiece bronze statues that were found near cape Artemision in the straits of Trikeri; one is the Classic depiction of Poseidon with outstretched arms making ready to throw his trident, and the other one, a famous Hellenistic depiction of a boy jockey. Both statues are now in the Archaeological Museum of Athens. The statues were found on a sunken Roman cargo ship. The wrecks bear witness to the fact that the Aegean can be quite treacherous between the islands, as we have learned on occasions when the northerly Meltemi winds or south-eastern Notios-Anatolikos whips up two-metre high waves. The reader may suspect that we risk our lives to hunt for archaeological treasures, which, however, is not the case. The treasures we seek are the joys of discovering a secluded cove for swimming, a picnic, seeing the ever changing shades of blues and greens of the Aegean Sea and feeling the sea spray on our faces.

Our routes often lead us to small coves along the coasts having taverns where we enjoy traditional Grecian cuisine and simple wines. We have become connoisseurs of simplicity. One of the simple traditions that we particularly appreciate is the meze, which comprises a small dish of appetisers served together with ouzo or tsipouro, and which you get, unadulterated, off the beaten track of tourism. Ouzo and tsipouro, like the Italian grappa, are distilled from the leavings of wine production. Tsipouro is principally the same as grappa and ouzo is flavoured with anise, similar to the French Pernod. In Greece, when you order an ouzo or tsipouro it traditionally is served with a meze, consisting of a small number of pleasant titbits (do not ask for a meze, just order an ouzo!). Presently an ouzo with meze costs about 1.50 Euro. The meze is served because it is the custom for Greeks not to drink an alcoholic beverage without eating. Depending on the ingenuity and generosity of the tavern keeper a meze may consist of two or three of a variety of things ranging from a section of tomato, an olive, a grilled shrimp, sardine or piece of octopus, a small fried fish or one or the other of numerous other things. It is not the custom to ask for special items unless perhaps you know the proprietor well. If you order ouzo follow-ups, the tavern keeper will modify the meze and usually increase the number of items. You may, but you are not expected to, drink out the ample supply of ouzo with each order. Above all, the meze must be praised for your host takes pride in preparing the meze depending upon what she or he has prepared that day. Three or four ouzos, it all depends, may give you a light lunch. Eating and drinking in Greece is a slow process combined with conversation, savouring, and meditation.

It was impossible, of course, to have visited Greece this year without seeing the new Acropolis Museum in Athens which opened in June 2009. In this ambience at the foot of the Parthenon, the museum is devoted to the archaeological sites in and around the Acropolis, beginning with the oldest Archaic finds on the lower floor and then through the Ionic to Classical periods, culminating with all aspects of the Parthenon on the third floor. This is the most exciting part of the museum. Through a giant window you look up and see the Parthenon in all its glory on top of the Acropolis whilst wandering in the museum along the schematic replica of the facades of the Parthenon in the original scale. There you see at eye level the rows of the inner metopes and outer friezes, and the statues of the north and south pediments, one devoted to Poseidon and the other to Athena. Many of the original statues are missing because they were looted by Lord Elgin and his mob and have been in London ever since. Now is the time for England to return the dubiously attained so-called Elgin Marbles to the Greek people and show their so-called English fair play! ©

Susan Terris

SOME INFERNAL MACHINES OF YESTERYEAR

PRESSURE COOKER

Before it was a catch phrase of overstressed modern day work life, ft was a large pot with an odd rattling gadget, like a tiny tin-roofed house on top-something to do with boiling and steam, and Mother used it to speed the overcooking of vegetables we didn't want to eat. Once she said, Watch it, when she hurried, heels clicking, to take a call-one of many-from overstressed Aunt Cee. The cooker loaded with lima beans-or was it brussels sprouts?-emitted an evil smell. Later, I'd sit at the table alone, gagging until I finished the stuff or hid it behind the radiator where I once put stewed tomatoes. So, instead of watching, I moved away, eyeing the contraption, eyeing it and failing to respond to the ominous hisses, until- pow!-sprouts/beans on the stove, floor, the walls and ceiling. Satisfied, smiling perhaps, aware of Mother's frantic tattoo of steps, I stood there, intrepid non-vegetable fauna, surrounded by a rainforest fog of dripping green inedible flora.

Depending on your point-of-view, missing class to ditto was either punishment or reward. Slowly, you turned the hand crank, saw the waxy backwards print invert itself on sheets of slick white paper rolling out problems for Miss Strong's second grade arithmetic. Yet, while inhaling the sweet alcohol stink, you somehow brushed against the spinning drum, which tattooed your arm with random numbers as the sleeve of your new white cardigan was forever stenciled purple.

A year or so after mailing a Kix box top plus a dime for the Lone Ranger's atom bomb ring with its red tail fins, secret compartment, and pinpoints of radiating light, I discovered Our Gal Sunday and THE QUESTION- asking if a girl from a mining town in Colorado could find happiness as the wife of a wealthy, titled Englishman. To research THE ANSWER, I had to be sick (?) enough to stay home from school and lie next to the Philco-me, Midwest giri dreaming of Silver Creek and marriage to Lord Henry. Both the Masked Man and Sunday were lessons in the odd gap between reality and imagination. No bomb small enough to fit in a ring. No guy big enough to save me from myself.

Advertised for $3.98 in the back pages of semi-sleazy women's magazines and guaranteed (or money back!) to boost a bra size by at least a letter. What flat-chested teen didn't want some magic to transform her lemons to a pair of oranges a boy could-when they danced-feel pressed hard against his chest? The machine that arrived in a brown envelope was a fat rubberband with two handles. Despite scrupulous practice, it was a bust, which undercut our faith in the Gospel According to Women's Magazines. Our disappointment paled, however, next to that of the young Charles Atlas crowd, boys who were smudging the back pages of even sleazier magazines desperately seeking enlargement of their own...for close-dancing and for other sweaty recreational activities. <>