HOUSTON, TX.- The medium of collage entered modern art in the first years of the 20th century through the hands of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, bringing with it possibilities for formal experimentation and new meanings that today’s artists continue to deploy and investigate.

To explore the sensibilities and worldviews that underlie collage, and to document the special place this medium held for U.S. artists in the wake of World War II, the Menil Collection presents The Precarious. Comprised of 30 works on paper and sculpture by thirteen artists, the exhibition casts new light on a strain of practice that brings to the foreground reconstituted materials which are worn, distressed, or discarded. Such rescued and reassembled materials transformed into art implicitly speak to social concerns. The poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire described the then-novel medium of collage as “steeped in humanity.” The implication was that many hands were tacitly responsible for a work’s manufacture. The Precarious takes a focused look at works in the Menil’s collection indebted to the collage tradition and the metaphors that attend the medium.

The exhibition will remain on view exclusively at the Menil through May 1 of next year.

The post-World War II works in the exhibition are drawn from the Menil’s holdings with two loans from private collections. The artists included are: John Chamberlain, Gene Charlton, Sari Dienes, Ellsworth Kelly, Elizabeth McFadden, Robert Nickle, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Anne Ryan, Richard Tuttle, and Cy Twombly.

Bookending the works of these artists, chronologically and geographically, are collages from the 1920s by the German-born Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) and two contemporary works by the Vietnamese-born Danh Vō (born 1975).

The Precarious is curated by David Breslin, the John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Chief Curator of the Menil Drawing Institute – his first since joining the Menil earlier this year. Breslin said, “The framework for the exhibition comes from the philosopher Judith Butler’s contention that dependence and fragility are the agents that shape community. ‘Precariousness,’ Butler wrote in 2009, ‘implies living socially, that is, the fact that one’s life is always in some sense in the hands of the other.’”

The lesson is not a new one, it can be seen as far back as the writings of Homer and in Greek tragedies that reflect on the consequences of war, but one could argue that World War II and the horrors that attended it heightened our awareness of the condition. The difficulties of survival and the importance of coexistence became obvious; nations needed to be allied, refugees needed accommodation, and cities needed to be rebuilt. The exhibition concentrates on a strain of artistic practice that foregrounds how precariousness is as much a social phenomenon as an aesthetic concern. Employing unstable materials that speak of past lives and alternative uses, collage embodies the joy and vulnerability that come with depending on others.

Added Menil Director Josef Helfenstein, “The Precarious demonstrates the wide knowledge, profound insight, and humane touch that David Breslin brings to our museum. Surprising and moving, this exhibition is both a substantial contribution to our understanding of modern and contemporary art and a promise of great things to come from the MDI under David’s leadership.”