Conceptual art

John Stezaker

John Stezaker is a collage artist but in the most simple way. His compositions typically consist of only two original images. This apparent simplicity makes them all the more uncanny.

As his influences he mentions Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle as a key text, Joseph Cornell the assemblage artist and of course Marcel Duchamp.

Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell is quite possibly one of America’s most innovative artists. His medium: the box. O.k., not just the box; also film, collage, and random objects. It is for the box, though, that we remember him, how he elevated something so forgettable into a surreal snapshot of reality.

Cornell fashioned his first collages, experimental films, and boxed creations in the 1930s. By 1940, his boxes contained found materials artfully arranged, then collaged and painted to suggest poetic associations inspired by the arts, humanities, and sciences. His pieces have been described as romantic, poetic, lyrical, and surrealistic.

I can also see a lot of Magritte in Stezaker's work.