Printed Matter

About

Printed ephemera carry words, typefaces and the texture of their moment, which makes them ready-made material. In September 1912 Georges Braque pasted strips of wood-grain wallpaper into a drawing, and Pablo Picasso soon added newspaper cuttings whose headlines seem to comment on the pictures. From 1919 Kurt Schwitters gathered tram tickets, sweet wrappers and advertisements into his Merz collages, and Tristan Tzara proposed making a Dada poem from words cut out of a newspaper.

After 1945 the printed street became a source. In Paris, Raymond Hains and Jacques Villeglé tore layered posters from hoardings and presented the ragged sheets as works. Felipe Jesus Consalvos, a Cuban-born cigar roller in the United States, made satirical collages from cigar bands and magazine cuttings that came to light only after his death. Look for dates, brand names and headlines in the fragments: they fix the work in time.