We can thank collage for a bunch of other art that we like even if we don't like collage

Perloff’s essay defines collage as a perceptual art as much as a visual art, and in this concept we find the ground-breaking shift in the author-viewer relationship that occurred with the development of such forms in the early 20^th century. With these forms, the viewer seems to be given more responsibility for the act of viewing, and collage seems to be asking the viewer to see double: It is itself and it is also something else. The “something else” may be representational (as in stamps arranged in the shape of a vase) or it may be relational (as new formal “dialogues” between objects placed next to each other), and the viewer is required to shift focus and perception in a way that reminds me of a perceptual illusion (see image, left). The viewer must train himself to perceive an image through multiple readings, no two of which can stay in focus at the same time because of their substantial difference. Their duality can’t be reconciled, and I think this results in a frustration as well as a pleasure – a sort of tension of the image that is itself the art of collage. The examples of collage that Perloff considers fine art use materials in a skill-less way to create a very skillful reading or thought – the art is in the use or juxtaposition of materials and not in the craft. Thus, the rendering is largely unskillful but the concept is advanced thought … so the thought is the art, and so forth, and then … hello, conceptual art!