The Mourning Edition: Newspapers in 20th Century Art

(Robert Gober, Newspapers)

By 1996, more than 1,100 newspapers had established a presence on the Internet. The printed news has competed for readership with its online counterpart ever since. As we contemplate the possible absence of newspapers in our circadian routines, let us look back on the paper’s contributions to 20^th century art.

Extremely cheap, widely circulated, easily obtainable, and blatantly connoting time and place, the ubiquitous paper presents itself as a potent material for any artist.

(Pablo Picasso, Glass and Bottle of Suze)

Entering the 20^th century, Pablo Picasso, Carlo Carra, Vladimir Tatlin, and the artists of the avant-garde, deemed newsprint a material worthy of the canvas. Living in a newly industrialized and urban society, they saw the newspaper as both a product and embodiment of their time and place.

(John Heartfield, Those Who Read Bourgeois Papers Will Become Blind and Deaf)

Artists in Germany, such as the members of the Neue Sachlichkeit, Dada and Bauhaus groups, had a much more negative view of the press. They understood it as a bourgeois commodity that promoted a traditional social hierarchy—so they tore it up and redesigned it to make it their own.

(Andy Warhol, 129 Die in Jet!)

American pop artists working in the 1950s and 1960s used newspapers as both the material and subject of their work, further appropriating the techniques and modes of popular media.

(Group Material, Aids Timeline)

Protesting the assumption of the newspaper as objective truth, international artists of the late 20^th and early 21^st century placed the paper in their work to provide platforms for mischaracterized and often unreported individuals and events. They employed the newspaper in painting, sculpture, performance, and installation to activate social change.

In Gustav Metzger’s 100,000 Newspapers, one is confronted with the physical mass of yesterday’s printed news, ever decaying. The specter haunting Metzger’s piece reflects our moment, on the cusp of total dematerialization.