Many have identified with the protagonist of George Orwell's portentous novel, 1984, but few have taken the message to heart as completely as montage artist Winston Smith. Twenty years ago, Winston adopted the name of Orwell's main character to remind himself and the rest of us that annihilation of the inspanidual is more than a fictional plot device. It's a subtext for modern life.

Viewing the world through Winston's eyes, the stuff of ordinary life becomes far more sinister and alien than any science fiction plot could hope to mimic.

Babies starve and fire guns. Villains inhabit Santa suits. Mom and Dad learn to shut up and buy. The rest of us act like nothing's wrong.

In his artwork, Winston exposes the intimidation and horror that inhabit commonplace icons. Television, clouds, aprons, and toasters seem at once threatening and threatened. When juxtaposed against more traditionally menacing images- submarines, guns and chain saws, for instance- an even more unnerving dynamic emerges. But it's all infused with a warmth that is at once sad and tinged with a wry humor.

Winston's ability to spot manipulation and exploitation was seeded early. His father, who had been battered by the Depression and subsequent recessions, once explained to his young son that he could afford to purchase a ten-cent package of cowboy toys- a badge, gun, and whistle- because the recent victory in Korea guaranteed America access to cheap products. Once again, the world was safe for sweatshops.

As Winston grew older, the inequalities and subversions inherent in our society became increasingly apparent. He wasn't alone. By the late sixties, youth was in revolt and culture was on trial. Amidst all this turmoil, Winston headed for art school in Italy. Six years later, his talents honed, he returned to an America he barely recognized.

The country had relaxed into a dulling complacency. Winston was particularly dismayed by the ease with which citizens faced intrusions into their privacy: armed guards and surveillance cameras in too many banks and corner stores; the electronic trails left by credit card purchases; a Big Brother mentality poisoning interactions in the arts, schools and workplaces. Winston soon realized that people had gradually come to not only tolerate these invasions, they welcomed them. He could almost hear them chanting, "Give me security or give me death."

Wielding a razor and a gluestick , Winston began working his way through hundreds of decades-old periodicals. He sensed a pattern emerging. In magazines published just before and during World War II, he read two distinct messages. General interest magazines stressed patriotism and belt-tightening. "Turn in your scrap metal, your children's toys, your solid gold wedding bands," the articles and ads encouraged. "And don't buy anything on the black market." Meanwhile, Fortune magazine and its ilk reassured the wealthy that their record earnings were sure to continue. The pages of these higher-toned magazines were thick with ads for yachts, private airplanes, and the most expensive whiskeys.

It was such a sweet deal, Winston realized. Citizens were being asked to scrimp and buy war bonds that funded research and development that eventually evolved into mass commodity products that people were enticed into buying... again, as it were. Added to this insult was the injury done to the environment. Factories spilled effluent into rivers and bays and the air while people were being asked to pay yet again, this time for ill-conceived clean-up efforts.

Winston retreated to the remote hills of northern California. In a cabin with no road, telephone, or electricity, he painstakingly constructed hundreds upon hundreds of collaged images, each exposing in its unique way, the absurdities that insist on masquerading as evening news and popular culture.

It wasn't until the emergence of punk rock culture that Winston found a sympathetic milieu.

By the late seventies and early eighties, wide-spread anger and deep-seated frustration were being set to a machine-gun beat. Lyrics full of vitriol and bald fact were hurled at audiences wildly unhappy about their prospects for the future. A hair older than the punk norm, Winston observed the phenomenon from the outside at first. Finally, he and a cohort, Jayed Scotti, began publishing Fallout, a xeroxed 'zine. The pages were crammed with early collages, exposes of oil company agendas, arguments against the UPC (Universal Product Code), and, not so incidentally, reviews and ads for over-the-edge bands and clubs that existed only in Winston and Jayed's fertile imaginations.

Winston soon caught the eye of Jello Biafra, lead singer and songwriter for Dead Kennedys, one of San Francisco's most provocative punk bands. The relationship proved a rich and ongoing one. Besides designing the distinctive DK logo, Winston created a number of album covers and booklets for the band. The mail started to roll in. Winston will never get rich from royalties on the use of his designs for graffiti, tattoos, and black market t-shirts, but his work is recognized by music fans world-wide.

The history of this book's cover image, Idol, illustrates the extent of Winston's influence. In Idol, a standard brass Christ-figure hangs on a crucifix made of dollar bills. Biafra chose the image for the cover of a Dead Kennedy album, In God We Trust, Inc. In England, police raided a number of stores for carrying the album, citing archaic anti-heresy laws. Local authorities in Massachusetts tried to close down a store that dared to display Winston's controversial image. Shortly thereafter, televangelist Pat Robertson gave Idol another boost. On his syndicated program, Robertson announced that he had seen an album cover that was too awful to show his viewing audience. He had a co-host describe it. The audience gasped. Winston had made his point.

Some of Winston's designs may have a dreamy quality, but he is no romantic looking back to a more benign time. His plea is for the moment. Technology, after all, drives his art form. The cut-and-paste "originals" are not the stuff of his art. It is only in reproduction, that one can truly appreciate the pieces.

Winston exists as necessary cultural commentator. He barks on the edges trying to keep himself and us honest. As influences, one might point to the montage-as-social-commentary of Max Ernst or the wrenching anti-Nazi photo-collages of Berliner John Heartfield. Like them, Winston upholds the highest and crankiest of standards. But in the rear window of history, Winston is most likely to be included in the tradition of arch-surrealist Andre Breton, who once remarked, "It is by the force of images that, in the course of time, real revolutions are made."

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