Sorcha Dallas

In summer 1918, the Berlin artists Hannah Hoch and Raoul Haussmann were on holiday on the Baltic coast. On the wall of their sitting room was a lithograph of the Kaiser, surrounded by his illustrious forebears, a scattering of patriotic symbols, such as German oaks and medals, and a single image of a young grenadier.

It was a poster they saw in almost every home that summer, during the last throes of a devastating war, but in this version, the face of the original grenadier was no longer visible, for pasted beneath his helmet was the head of their landlord, Herr Felten. Hoch and Haussmann, hardly the most war-like patriots, were seized not by the sentiment but by the artistic possibilities, and from the unlikeliest of sources, photomontage - the rebellious, confrontational, and provocative art form of the Berlin Dada movement - was born.

Almost a century later, as Plunder, the new exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts demonstrates, techniques like montage and collage, cut and paste, are still inspirational to artists. It’s just that these days its as likely to be cheesy pop diva Whitney Houston who finds herself sliced or spliced as the Kaiser’s loyal soldier.

Plunder is a marvellous and rowdy ragbag of a show, featuring art that recycles existing objects and imagery, with an awesome range of artists, from Kurt Schwitters to Jim Lambie. Dada, surrealism, punk, pop art, and the art of pop rub shoulders in a performance that is part Berlin cabaret, part sweaty club night.

It begins with Whitney, who is whining away in a brutalised cut-up version of her pop video, singing over and over, ”I … I … I …”, reduced to a kind of elemental narcissism by artist Candice Breitz, and continues with a performance of a choral version of a Kraftwerk song, Robot, made by artist Joao Onofre. Looping through the show like a bass line is the theme of pop music’s love affair with the ready-made, raw material of everyday stuff, from bus tickets to glossy mags, and of art’s lasting love affair with pop.

Linder Sterling’s iconic 1977 photomontage, used by Buzzcocks for the cover of Orgasm Addict, has lost none of its punch. A glossy, airbrushed nude, with an argos iron for a head, and extra pairs of lips where her nipples should be, it still thrills with its raging feminism and its sense of humour. Strangely, Jamie Reid’s artwork for the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen seems small and exhausted in comparison, as though the simple black-and-white lithograph can’t possibly match up to its reputation. Both rub shoulders with Sarah Lucas’s Hysterical Attack (mouths), a sculpture of a disembodied female made for the Freud Museum in which the myth of the vagina dentata comes horribly to life.

Next to them, Hannah Hoch still seems as fresh and precise as ever, with her sinister little montage of trapped female figures fusing glamour photography and ethnography. It is one of a number of loans from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, including a great group of works by Paolozzi and an intriguing Edward Burra, that give the show the historical weight it deserves.

In a room of its own is a shrine to designer Peter Saville’s iconic work for Factory Records. Under glass are some of the greatest record covers ever: Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures set down beside the scientific textbook that Saville ripped it off from, and the gorgeous Fantin Latour flower painting on the cover of New Order’s Power, Corruption and Lies. Outside is some original sleeve art work by the Beta Band’s John Maclean, all glitter and butterflies against a black background.

Plunder is so dense and rich you could spend hours among the material: Michael Mallet’s intricate paper collages, Melanie Carvalho’s tropical landscapes, and Cathy Wilke’s tiny lyrical paintings. This is a treasure chest of possibilities. Plunder, indeed.

Across at Glasgow’s Modern Institute, Beck’s prize winner Toby Paterson likewise mines the archives of existing material: architectural text books and drawings, the faded sites of British modernism, and the utopian glow of fifties art and design. His new show is typically ambitious, despite the smallness of its scale. A white, sculptural framework forms a kind of architecture on which the work sits. Architectural plans, elevations, and ornament become motifs for a series of constructions, paintings on MDF, and perspex and screenprints in which complex ideas are distilled down to a kind of clinical essence. Paterson also shows work by two other artists: an exquisite perspex construction by Mary Martin from 1969, and a muted, putty-coloured painting of an urban scene by Sam Prekop. Prekop is perhaps better known as part of Chicago band, The Sea and Cake. Art and music: the love affair continues.