The Anthropology of Assemblage reader response

William Seitz first offered the definition of “assemblage” in 1961. It appeared that assemblage was the anti-art-art, made up of natural or manufactured materials, objects or fragments of materials not intended as art. The concept of assemblage had been made possible by the earlier twentieth-century cubist collages and constructions and the surrealist object. Assemblage challenged the theory of Art and the concept of art making by using materials that could be thought of as throwaways or simply put, trash. However, it can range from the “dirty” junk sculptures like artists Bruce Conner to the “cool conceptualism of Marcel Duchamp” (24). Assemblage is thought of as Collage’s cousin, both standing on grounds of anti-art. And so it was hard for it to be accepted into the world of high-modernist art. Now assemblage is widely accepted and is visible in museums. Jonathon Katz argues that assemblage has a special function of secrecy, “able to conceal meaning beneath and among its many layers and parts. Assemblage can appeal to the hand and the body, and other senses like smell and hearing, while strongly suggesting its own contingency” (25). These attributes make it easily relatable to non-western object. From assemblage also stems bricolage which Levi Strauss analysis states “is a collection of oddments left over from human endeavors” (26).
“The antiart function of found materials and their carefully chaotic combinations carried the potential to unravel the understanding of what art is for, becoming less an object of contemplation and poetic transfiguration than a tool for doing things, perhaps by roundabout and covert ways- a means of taking action via the apparently benign debris of everyday culture” (30).
When you think about how accepted assemblage is today as a form of art it is hard to contemplate that it has had to fight its way into existence. Thinking of how it started off on grounds as antiart-art and now it is readily accepted as an art form. Still I do believe it has a place as antiart because there are still existing notions of art being that of “high end.” It makes perfect sense that assemblage is related to the cubist and surrealist movement since they were all challenging what art was thought to be. I personally found the part on bricolage intriguing when Levi Strauss compared it to magic, “lying half way between scientific knowledge and mythical or magical thought” (29). He states that both are results of actions and manipulations, collections of activities. I think that it is pertinent to acknowledge the importance that assemblage has had in the history of art. Along with other movements it widened the spectrum, of acceptable art and pushed the boundaries of imagination and conceptualism.