Ric Kasini Kadour is the editor, publisher, and co-founder of Kolaj Magazine and in that capacity has been advocating for a deeper, more complex understanding of the medium. In addition to being a quarterly, printed magazine that ships to thirty-six different countries, Kolaj maintains an active online presence and shares information about collage in exhibition. In 2018, Kadour declared the second Saturday of May to be World Collage Day, an annual, global day celebrating collage that saw 50 events in 26 countries. He also produces Kolaj Fest New Orleans, a multi-day festival & symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, July 10-14, 2019. He curated “Revolutionary Paths: Critical Issues in Collage” in July 2018 at Antenna Gallery in which all of the work in the exhibition represented a point of departure for further curatorial inquiry. (This past March, he released the exhibition catalog.) He is currently working on a succeeding for the 2019 edition of Kolaj Fest New Orleans. He recently gave an interview to The Weird Show where he spoke about how he came to be involved with collage and Kolaj Magazine, and how he sees collage’s place in the art world.
Collage Research Network sent Kadour a series of questions: We wanted to know why he thinks collage is relevant and popular? We often discuss collage in its European and American contexts – the invention was by a Spaniard in Paris, the proliferation of the form occurred in Germany, the evolution of the form was taken further by the Americans, and in the digital world, collage is, arguably losing its nationality. Kolaj promotes and presents artists from all corners of the world, do you think contemporary collage is becoming more global? ‘Kolaj’ is the Turkish word for collage and the phonetic spelling of collage in French; being a Montreal-based publication, the French connection makes sense, but why the Turkish connection? This is what he sent us:
We need to stop thinking of Pablo Picasso as the inventor of collage. What Picasso and Georges Braque did was use collage to solve a particular problem they were having with analytical cubist painting. They weren’t the first to use the practice and perpetuating the myth obfuscates art history which, if you approach it, as we do at Kolaj Magazine, using a collage-centric view, is much more open to more voices from more places. The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle, for example, has a Coptic boxed collage from 5-6th century (1) that reads as contemporary as Chuck Scalin’s work, which Diana Thompson Vincelli profiles in the current issue of the magazine. (2) The Seattle Asian Art Museum has a 1898 snuff bottle by Chinese artist Ma Shauxian (3) that reminds me of how artists like Evelyn Davis-Walker (4)–who appears in the recently released exhibition catalog, Revolutionary Paths: Critical Issues in Collage (5) Picasso and Braque weren’t even the first to use collage to solve a problem with painting. In the first of a series of four articles about his theory of Uncollage, Todd Bartel writes about how 16th century Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo was using collage-based operations to compose is paintings. We not only need to recognize that referring to Picasso and Braque as the “inventors of collage” is part of how we maintain a European- and painting- centric view of art history, we need to recognize that the canon of art history, as it currently is practised by museums and academia, exists to serve the needs of a contemporary art market that is doing little to speak to humanity at-large.
When we turn the axis of art history to a collage-centric view, all of a sudden the canon opens up to a deeper, more complex history. The contributions of Victorian women and their relationship to photography and their practice of scrapbooking becomes more relevant. Black quiltmakers from the Southern United States become forerunners of abstraction. Africa becomes the progenitor of assemblage. The paper art of China and Japan becomes an important foundation for 20th century printmaking. And so on, and so on. The airplane was not the first technology to connect the world. The world has been one for thousands of years and ideas have been shared and traded since the dawn of humanity. The curtain is gone andthe idea that Europeans created everything no longer holds water. Do I think contemporary collage is becoming more global? No, I think the world has been revealed to be more global than previous generations understood. We can now, somewhat effortlessly, see and talk about how we are now fundamentally linked to one another and also how we have been relating to one another for a very long time.
I am excited about the launch of the Collage Research Network and its potential to help draw out collage’s history and further document the role collage plays in contemporary culture. In addition to supporting contemporary, working artists, we need to engage with academia, piece together lost histories, and challenge existing narratives about art. I see the Collage Research Network playing an important role in that critical work.
My heritage is Turkish, from Kayseri. It’s one of the reasons the magazine uses the Turkish word for collage as its name. I spend a lot of time thinking of what it means to come from the crossroads of civilization. You cannot tell the story of Kayseri without also telling the story of the Tocharians, Anatolians, the Hittites, the Persians, the Romans, the traders from the East, the crusaders from the West. You have to think about the legacy of Zoroastrianism and Judaism and Christianity and Islam and how they mingled with Tengriist and Shamanistic nomadic people. And you have to think about how one group of people destroyed and hid the signs of the group of people who were in power before them. It is a complicated, messy, deep history of humanity. But today, in the 21st century, we are all kind of living in a present-day Kingdom of Cappadocia, rubbing shoulders, sharing our stories, and mixing our narratives. Collage, for all its Dada-ist inspired randomness and chaos, is the perfect medium for this time because it allows us to take two disparate things and make something harmonious and beautiful.
As collage artists, as people who love and understand collage, our job is to show the world how this medium can help people get along better.
2. http://kolajmagazine.com/content/content/articles/unnoticed-urban-elements/
4. http://kolajmagazine.com/content/content/collage-exhibitions/house-wife-revisited/
5. http://kolajmagazine.com/content/news/revolutionary-paths-catalogue-released/
Kolaj Magazine is a quarterly, printed magazine about contemporary collage. They cover how collage is made, how collage is exhibited, and how collage is collected. They are interested in the role collage plays in contemporary visual culture. With minimal advertising, Kolaj Magazine is supported by its subscribers. One can learn more atwww.kolajmagazine.com
In addition to his work at Kolaj Magazine, Kadour is also the editor of Vermont Art Guide, a print magazine that explores contemporary regionalism in American art. Kadour is the Curator of Contemporary Art at Rokeby Museum in Ferrisburgh, Vermont, USA, a historic site on the Underground Railroad, where he is engaged in an ambitious two-year project designed to demonstrate how contemporary art can pick up the unfinished work of history and foster civic engagement in social, economic, and environmental issues. And he maintains an active art and writing practice.
LINKS
Revolutionary Paths: http://kolajmagazine.com/content/news/revolutionary-paths-catalogue-released/
The Weird Show: http://theweirdshow.info/2019/03/18/ric-kasini-kadour-artist-and-co-founder-of-kolaj-magazine-the-one-and-only-art-magazine-focused-on-collage/
World Collage Day: http://www.kolajmagazine.com/worldcollageday/2019/index.html
Kolaj Magazine: http://www.kolajmagazine.com/kolaj-fest-new-orleans.html
Vermont Art Guide: http://vermontartguide.com/content/
Rokeby Museum: http://rokeby.org/contemporary-art-at-rokeby-museum/
Ric Kadour’s Art and Writing: http://rickasinikadour.com/
Collage Research Network 