Cinema’s Technical Vanguard, Modern and Contemporary Art

By Christiane Wagner

In retrospect, in this fourth issue of Art Style Magazine,  the bases of the primary aesthetic reflections are focused on modern art and avant-garde movements in their effects, mainly to represent the visually perceived universe of the constructivists, cubists, futurists, dadaists, and surrealists, configuring images through collage, montage, and assemblage to the techniques of film editing. The essay “Montage and Assemblage: an Aesthetic Shock” by Dominique Berthet presents the methods and theories of significant Russian filmmakers in the development of film editing effects and shows how “montage (editing) has transitioned from concept to concept in the film theory of young Soviet filmmakers.” For instance, the French word montage (1917) was appropriated and transformed into a concept–the concept of film editing–that is to say, that it loads of rich theoretical content. Also, he highlighted montage as an aesthetic and political challenge associated with other arts rather than with cinema. Moreover, he stated montage being based on the shock of fragments, themselves linked to artistic modernity, and the assembly of fragments as “the mark of refusal and emancipation vis-à-vis representation, déjà-vu, of the established order.” Finally, toward contemporary art in its “limitless hybridization of artistic practices.”

“It should be noted that the contradictory debates between Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Vertov, and Eisenstein on the subject of montage must be seen in the context in which they were born – that is, the Soviet Union of 1917-1940. Montage assumes the selection of fragments, their combination (approximation), and the construction of a set” (Berthet 2019).