CLIP ART
IS
POLITICAL
When every scene is surveilled, every movement is monetized, and attention is bought and sold, the generic image is more resonant than ever. A lightbulb, a closeup of a handshake, a figure climbing the ladder of success: these images carry no algorithmic signature.
Clip art isn’t kitsch or nostalgic. It’s a rejection of a world in which the image has lost its shared meaning.
Clip artists produced imagery with recognizable style and no fixed meaning. Their work invited interpretation, adaptation, and reuse. They helped the world to speak in pictures. The same image could serve multiple contexts: handed from neighbor to neighbor, pressed into newsletters, stapled to telephone poles, tucked inside union pamphlets and school announcements. Clip art belongs to everyone—whoever has the scissors or the lasso tool.
This is not a retreat to into the past. This is the recovery of a principle the past had the good sense to practice: that the tools of representation can be a shared language whose interpretations are open to all.
IS A BAND
Thank you to those who attended the Clip Art Megamix at FWB FEST 2026! Email your questions, comments, complaints, and compliments directly to: email@jonabechtolt.com.
Clip Art is a new audio/video project (you can also just call it a band).
Jona Bechtolt is a Grammy-nominated musician, producer, artist, and designer. He is the founder of YACHT, a decades-spanning art project disguised as a band, which has produced nine full-length albums and—among other things—an unplayable compact disc, a philosophical handbook, an eyewear collection, a documentary feature, a fragrance, a 62-foot video installation, several large-scale public art activations, and presentations for art museums, universities, festivals, tech conferences, and music venues of every size around the world. Jona is the co-creator of the award-winning video game Blippo+, released for Playdate, Steam, Nintendo Switch, and macOS.
The full-length album, Clip Art Vol I & Vol II, is set for release later this year. If you're already interested in going deep, check out the album Read Me for the tracklist, lyrics, and credits.
The next Clip Art performance will take place on November 17th 2026 at Zebulon in Los Angeles. For booking inquiries, write Ryan Craven at TBA Agency.
If you have clip art books, discs, diskettes, disk images, pages, or any other ephemera that you would like to send to me, please do!
CLIP ART
c/o Wilshire Online
6135 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA, 90046
Frank Fruzyna for Dynamic Graphics