8). A painting could have been done with a man cutting off the head of another man, but the focal point of such a work would be the violence and gore present. This photomontage is actually referential to the process of creation. It refers to process of cutting, arranging, and pasting specific photographic images in an extremely powerful juxtaposition. In the manifesto of the First International Dada Exhibition, Heartfield actually wrote: "Why paint anything, when photographs of things lie ready to hand and in great abundance? The task of art is no longer to represent the world but to rearrange it (Danto, 918)." Heartfield is only cutting up a photograph of Zorgiebel, not actually decapitating him. But, Heartfield is trying to convey the fact that these cut and rearranged photographs can become a tool for the rearrangement of the political order.Let us now examine this photomontage in terms of the secondary realities, which it creates. The term secondary reality has foundations in philosophy. Coined by the philosopher, Nelson Goodman, images of objects contain secondary realities. For example, the primary reality of the word, cat, refers to a specific cat or all cats in general. The secondary reality of the word cat refers to all images of cats. Thus, it becomes difficult to determine, which reality is being referred to when one mentions a word like cat. Is it an actual cat or a just a picture of one? Humans have therefore created some kind of relationship between an image of an object and an actual object. It is this relationship between the primary and secondary realities of certain utilizes better photographic artist in history (Danto, 919). The photomontage contains a man having his head cut off by another man. This is not an image of violence, but a photomontage of certain photographic images pasted together. The photomontage refers to the primary reality, which it depicts, juxtaposing images and exploiting their s...
