Photomontage

"I felt that I could use [the computer's] ability to erase the suturing of the [photomontage] elements to reconstitute, synthetically, a traditional pictorial space. That is an unusual use of montage, at least in the context of modernist art. Montage has been a technique fundamentally devoted to the breaking up of traditional pictorial space, and the sense of unity of an image based on that space. Outside of modernism, of course, the montage has been used to continue the traditional idea of spatial illusionism..."

Wall's Tableau Mort, Oxford Art Journal

A conference of papers dedicated to the analysis of individual works, considered necessary, and in praise of the individuation of art work (the kind of systematicity or wholeness demanded by the tableau) which encourages this kind of sustained academic attention.

I am intrigued by Wall's approach, thought not necessarily personally influenced, to creating traditional pictorial spaces. I can't help but draw conclusions between his work and that of Simon Johan, whose seamless composite images are much more visually striking, but have inspired little in the way of academic discussion; both have taken a post-production approach to creating compositions that make reference to the icons of Art History 101. My Photoshop skills are nowhere near the realm of creation (I'm still at base-camp making image corrections), so I will continue to look for compositions in my viewfinder, keeping in mind the classical figurations that have come before me.