John Stezaker – successor to Ernst, Dali...and Hitchcock

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Howard Hollands reviews two new publications on the intriguing work of John Stezaker

John Stezaker’s work since the 1970s examines relationships to and between photographic images: as documentation of truth, purveyor of memory, and symbol of modern culture. In his collages, Stezaker appropriates images found in books, magazines, and postcards and uses them as ‘readymades’. Through his juxtapositions, Stezaker adopts and adapts the content and contexts of the original images to convey his own witty and poignant meanings. He says:

I love that moment of discovery, when something appears out of the ground of its disappearance: the anonymous space of circulation, where images remain unseen and overlooked.

Stezaker sometimes focuses on the concept of portraiture, both as an art historical genre and public identity. Using publicity shots of classic film stars, he is a master of the scalpel as he splices and overlaps famous faces, creating hybrid ‘icons’ that dissociate the familiar to create sensations of the uncanny. In this sense he is clearly in the surrealist tradition of Max Ernst or Hannah Hoch. He will couple male and female identity into unified characters, creating a disjointed harmony. In his correlated images, personalities (and our idealizations of them) become ancillary and empty, rendered abject through their magnified flaws and struggle for visual dominance.

In using stylistic images from Hollywood’s golden era, Stezaker both temporally and conceptually engages with his interest in Surrealism, and one recalls Dali in this fascination.

In both these publications we can indulge our fascination with visual engagement through his intriguing images, many of which we may have seen before in other publications, but the contexts provided by the accompanying essays always offer new readings. There is some repetition of essays to be found in earlier publications but they are worth repeating.

In ‘Nude and Landscape’, published to mark the exhibition held between 13 October and 20 November 2011 at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia; the accompanying essay is by Sid Sachs followed by William Horner ‘in conversation’ with Stezaker and titled ‘Before-worlds, underworlds and over-worlds’.

 ‘One on One’, published in both English and Hebrew, is designed to accompany the show in the Prints and Drawings Gallery at Tel Aviv Museum of Art. This includes a range of excellent essays from ‘Arresting Resistance’ by Irith Hadar, who also curated the show, to a thought-provoking piece, ‘Tabula Rasa’ by associate curator Dalit Matatyahu and followed by another ‘in conversation’ with John Stezaker, this time with Christophe Gallois and Daniel F. Herrmann.

Both publications provide useful bibliographic notes and information about the works shown and ‘One to One’ has helpful biographical background notes. This quality seems to be a characteristic of all the Ridinghouse publications on John Stezaker that I have read, and they help the interested reader/viewer to really track the development of this complex artist.

In many respects Stezaker is the Alfred Hitchcock of the film still; it is the way he uses the photographic image to challenge our visual perceptions and assumptions. It is comparable to Hitchcock’s own exploring of these phenomena in films such as Rear Window or Vertigo. This is a measure of the sheer quality in Stezaker, and shown well in these two publications.

 A consistent feature of Ridinghouse publications that show Stezaker’s photomontages, collages and prints is the sheer quality of reproduction – they reproduce so well, and the predominance of black and white imagery helps. In addition, one senses a devoted group of admirers and critics who thoroughly enjoy writing and talking about his work. I have wondered about this and think it may be because so much is revealed at each viewing of the works, accessible, and always able to be shared, regardless of differences in the way the work is read.

John Stezaker: Nude and Landscape with text by Elizabeth Manchester and Sid Sachs, and a conversation between the artist and William Horner is published by Ridinghouse  and Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, Philadelphia, 2013.  128 pp., over 40 colour illus, £19.95/ $29.95,  paperback. ISBN 978 1 905464 53 1

John Stezaker: One on One  with texts by Irith Hadar, Dalit Matatyahu and a conversation between the artist, Christophe Gallois and Daniel F. Herrmann is published by Ridinghouse  and Tel Aviv Museum of Art, bilingual: English and Hebrew, 2013. 144pp., 63 colour illus, £19.95 / $29.95 hardback.  ISBN 978 1 905464 71 5