Martha Rosler, Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful (2004).
I’ve always had a huge soft spot for collage art, not only because that’s the closest I’ve ever come to making actual art myself, but also because if the point of art is to make a comment on the human condition at specific time and place, what better materials to use than contemporary magazines and catalogues and clippings?
Martha Rosler made fantastic collages in the sixties and seventies protesting the Vietnam War. Fast forward thirty years and she’s back with a vengeance, this time drawing parallels to current war in Iraq as well as America’s obsession with owning beautiful things and being considered beautiful people. Sure, it’s the same idea with models in place of sunny sixties housewives, but she makes a wonderful, colorful point.
