Abstract
My research uses the making of assemblage sculpture considered in a dialogical relationship to enact a necessary re-reading and interrogation of this subaltern tradition of sculptural practice.
In this paper, I argue that the specific poetic and associational possibilities inherent in this medium remain largely unexamined, as the major studies of this subject (Seitz, 1961, Janis and
Blesh, 1967 and Waldman, 1992) tend to subsume assemblage into narratives which characterise it as a questioning or rejection of pictorialism, rather than acknowledging its own authentic identity and (representational) possibilities, both as a historical practice and as a contemporary strategy for artistic production.
In relation to this Deleuze and Guattari’s use of the term in their work is of some interest, although their writing tends to emphasise “the process of arranging organising, fitting together” rather than “the arrangement or organisation” itself (Macgregor-Wise in Stivale 2005, p. 77). However I argue that, given the linkages between this mode of practice and Wittgenstein’s use of the methodological strategies of juxtaposition and inversion, assemblage is perhaps more usefully re-thought within a grammatical framework which derives from a dialogical exchange between Wittgenstein’s later work (as developed by Mulhall: 1990 and Savickey: 1999) and contemporary assemblage practice.
In this paper, I argue that the specific poetic and associational possibilities inherent in this medium remain largely unexamined, as the major studies of this subject (Seitz, 1961, Janis and
Blesh, 1967 and Waldman, 1992) tend to subsume assemblage into narratives which characterise it as a questioning or rejection of pictorialism, rather than acknowledging its own authentic identity and (representational) possibilities, both as a historical practice and as a contemporary strategy for artistic production.
In relation to this Deleuze and Guattari’s use of the term in their work is of some interest, although their writing tends to emphasise “the process of arranging organising, fitting together” rather than “the arrangement or organisation” itself (Macgregor-Wise in Stivale 2005, p. 77). However I argue that, given the linkages between this mode of practice and Wittgenstein’s use of the methodological strategies of juxtaposition and inversion, assemblage is perhaps more usefully re-thought within a grammatical framework which derives from a dialogical exchange between Wittgenstein’s later work (as developed by Mulhall: 1990 and Savickey: 1999) and contemporary assemblage practice.
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