A collage composed of magazine articles and pictures
Collage (From the French: coller, to stick) is
regarded as a work of visual arts made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. Use of this technique made its dramatic
appearance among oil paintings in the early 20th century as an art form of groundbreaking novelty.
An artistic collage work may include newspaper clippings, ribbons, bits of colored or hand-made papers, portions of other artwork, photographs, and such, glued to a piece of paper or canvas.
Techniques of collage were first used at the time of the invention of paper in
China around 200 BC. The use of collage, however, remained very
limited until the 10th century in Japan, when calligraphers began to apply glued paper, using texts on surfaces, when writing their
poems.[1]
The technique of collage appeared in medieval Europe during the 13th century.
Gold leaf panels started to be applied in Gothic
cathedrals around the 15th and 16th centuries. Gemstones and other precious metals were applied to religious images, icons, and
also, to coats of arms.[1]
In the 19th century, collage methods also were used among hobbyists for memorabilia (i.e.
applied to photo albums) and books (i.e. Hans
Christian Andersen, Carl Spitzweg).[1]
The term collage derives from the French "coller" meaning "glue".[2] This term was coined by both Georges
Braque and Pablo Picasso in the beginning of the 20th century when collage became a
distinctive part of modern art.
Collage in painting
Cubist painter, Pablo Picasso, was the first to use the
collage technique for oil paintings. In 1912 for his Still Life with Chair Caning (Nature-morte à la chaise
cannée),[3] he pasted a patch of oilcloth with a chair-cane design onto the canvas of the piece.
Surrealist artists have made extensive use of collage. Cubomania is a collage made by cutting an image into squares which are then reassembled
automatically or at random. Inimage is a name given by René Passerson to what is usually considered a style of surrealist collage (though it perhaps qualifies
instead as a decollage) in which parts are cut away from an existing image to reveal another
image.
Collages produced using a similar, or perhaps identical, method are called etrécissements by Richard Genovese from a method
first explored by Marcel Mariën. Genovese also introduced excavation collage (that
includes elements of decollage) which is the layering of printed images, loosely affixed at the corners and then tearing away
bits of the upper layer to reveal images from underneath, thereby introducing a new collage of images. Penelope Rosemont invented some methods of surrealist collage, the prehensilhouette and the
landscapade.
Collage was often called the art form of the twentieth century, but this was never fully realized.
Surrealist games such as parallel collage use collective techniques of
collage making.
Another technique is that of canvas collage, which is the application, typically with glue, of separately painted
canvas patches to the surface of a painting's main canvas. Well known for use of this technique
is British artist John Walker in his paintings
of the late 1970s, but canvas collage was already an integral part of the mixed media works of American artist Jane Frank by the early
1960s. The intensely self-critical Lee Krasner also
frequently destroyed her own paintings by cutting them into pieces, only to create new works of art by reassembling the pieces
into collages.
Collage in architecture
Though Le Corbusier and others used techniques that are akin to collage, collage as a
theoretical concept only became widely discussed after the publication of Collage City by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter in 1978. The authors were, however, not championing collage in the pictorial
sense, much less seeking the types of disruptions of meaning that occur with collage. Instead they were looking to challenge the
uniformity of Modernism and saw collage with its non-linear notion of history as a means to
reinvigorate design practice. Not only does historical urban fabric have its place, but in studying it, designers were, so it was
hoped, able to get a sense of how better to operate. Rowe was a member of the so-called Texas Rangers, a group of architects who taught at the
University of Texas for a while. Another member of that group was
Bernhard Hoesli, a Swiss architect who went on to become an important educator at the
ETH-Zurirch. Whereas for Rowe, collage was more a metaphor than an actual practice,
Hoesli actively made collages as part of his design process. He was close to Robert Slutzky, a
New York based artist, and frequently introduced the question of collage and disruption in his studio work.
Collage with wood
What may be called
wood collage is the dominant feature in this 1964
mixed media
painting by
Jane Frank (1918-1986)
The wood collage is a relatively novel type. It was during a fifteen-year period of intense experimentation beginning
in the mid 1940s that Louise Nevelson evolved her sculptural wood collages, assembled from found scraps, including parts of furniture, pieces of wooden crates or barrels, and architectural remnants like stair railings or moldings.
Generally rectangular, very large, and painted black, they resemble gigantic paintings. Concerning Nevelson's Sky
Cathedral (1958), the Museum of Modern Art
catalogue states, "As a rectangular plane to be viewed from the front, Sky Cathedral has the pictorial quality of a
painting..."[4] Yet such pieces also present themselves as
massive walls or monoliths, which can sometimes be viewed from either side, or even looked through.
Much wood collage art is considerably smaller in scale, framed and hung as a painting would
be. It usually features pieces of wood, wood shavings, and scraps, assembled on an empty canvas (if there is painting involved),
or on a wooden board. Such framed, picture-like, wood-relief collages offer the artist an
opportunity to explore the qualities of depth, natural color, and textural variety inherent in
the material, while drawing on and taking advantage of the language, conventions, and historical resonances that arise from the
tradition of creating pictures to hang on walls. The technique of wood collage is also sometimes combined with painting and other
media in a single work of art.
Frequently, what is called "wood collage art" uses only natural wood - such as driftwood,
or parts of found and unaltered logs, branches, sticks, or bark. This raises the question of whether such artwork is collage (in
the original sense) at all. This is because the early, paper collages were generally made from bits of text or pictures - things
originally made by people, and functioning or signifying in some cultural context. The collage brings these still-recognizable
"signifiers" (or fragments of signifiers) together, in a kind of semiotic collision. A truncated wooden chair or staircase newel used in a
Nevelson work can also be considered a potential element of collage in the same sense: it had some original, culturally
determined context. Unaltered, natural wood, such as one might find on a forest floor, arguably has no such context.
(Driftwood is of course sometimes ambiguous: while a piece of driftwood may once have been a
piece of worked wood - for example, part of a ship - it may be so weathered by salt and sea that its past functional identity is
nearly or completely obscured.)
Collage in music
-
The concept of collage has crossed the boundaries of visual arts. In music, with the advances
on recording technology, avant-garde artists started experimenting with cutting and pasting
since the middle of the twentieth century. George Martin created collages of recordings
while producing the records of The Beatles. By the 1990s and 2000s it became apparent that
"musical collages" had become the norm for popular
music, especially on rap, hip hop (rap-pop), and
electronic music.
Digital collage
Digital collage is the technique of using [computer] tools in collage creation to encourage chance associations of disparate
visual elements and the subsequent transformation of the visual results through the use of electronic media.
Literary collage
Collage novels are books with images selected from other publications and collaged
together following a theme or narrative.
The bible of discordianism, the Principia Discordia, is described by its author as a literary collage. A collage in literary terms
may also refer to a layering of ideas or images.
Decoupage
-
Decoupage is a type of collage usually defined as a craft. It is the process of placing a
picture onto an object for decoration. Often decoupage causes the picture to appear to have
depth and look as though it had been painted on the object.
The process is to glue (or otherwise affix) a picture to an object, then adding more copies of the picture on top,
progressively cutting out more and more of the background, giving the illusion of depth in the picture. The picture is often
coated with varnish or some other sealant for protection.
Photomontage
-
Collage made from photographs, or parts of photographs, is called photomontage. Photomontage is the process (and result) of
making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes
photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. The same method is accomplished today
using image-editing software. The technique is referred to by professionals as "compositing", and in casual internet usage it is
often called "photoshopping".
Other methods for combining pictures are also called photomontage, such as Victorian "combination printing", the printing from
more than one negative on a single piece of printing paper (e.g. O. G.
Rejlander, 1857), front-projection and computer montage techniques. Much like a collage is composed of multiple facets,
artists also combine montage techniques. Romare Bearden’s (1912-1988) series of black and
white "photomontage projections" is an example. His method began with compositions of paper, paint, and photographs put on boards
8 1/2x11 inches. Bearden fixed the imagery with an emulsion that he then applied with handroller. Subsequently, he enlarged the
collages photographically.
The 19th century tradition of physically joining multiple images into a composite and photographing the results prevailed in
press photography and offset lithography until the widespread use of digital image editing. Contemporary photo editors in magazines now create "paste-ups" digitally.
Creating a photomontage has, for the most part, become easier with the advent of computer software such as Adobe Photoshop, Pixel image editor, and GIMP. These programs make the changes digitally, allowing for faster workflow and more precise results. They also
mitigate mistakes by allowing the artist to "undo" errors. Yet some artists are pushing the boundaries of digital image editing
to create extremely time-intensive compositions that rival the demands of the traditional arts. The current trend is to create
pictures that combine painting, theatre, illustration and graphics in a seamless photographic whole.
Legal issues
When collage uses existing works, the result is what some copyright scholars call a derivative work. The collage has a copyright
separate from any copyrights pertaining to the original incorporated works.
Due to redefined and reinterpreted copyright laws, and increased financial interests, some forms of collage art are
significantly restricted. For example, in the area of sound collage (such as
hip hop music), some court rulings effectively have eliminated the de minimis doctrine as a defense to copyright infringement,
thus shifting collage practice away from non-permissive uses relying on fair use or
de minimis protections, and toward licensing. [5] Examples of musical collage art that have run afoul of modern
copyright are The Grey Album and Negativland's U2.
The copyright status of visual works is less troubled, although still ambiguous. For instance, some visual collage artists
have argued that the first-sale doctrine protects their work. The first-sale
doctrine prevents copyright holders from controlling consumptive uses after the "first sale" of their work. The de minimis doctrine and the fair use exception also provide important
defenses against claimed copyright infringement. [6] The
Second Circuit in October, 2006, held that artist
Jeff Koons was not liable for copyright infringement because his incorporation of a
photograph into a collage painting was fair use. [7]
Collage artists
See also
Further reading
- Adamowicz, Elza (1998). Surrealist Collage in
Text and Image: Dissecting the Exquisite Corpse. Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 0-521-59204-6.
- Ruddick Bloom, Susan (2006). Digital
Collage and Painting: Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art. Focal Press. ISBN
0-240-80705-7.
References
- Etrécissements by Richard Genovese
- Museum Factory -by Istvan Horkay
- History of Collage Excerpts from Nita Leland and Virginia Lee and from George F. Brommer
- West, Shearer (1996). The Bullfinch Guide to Art. UK: Bloomsbury
Publishing. ISBN 0-8212-2137-X.
- Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter. Collage City MIT University Press, Cambridge MA,
1978.
- Mark Jarzombek, "Bernhard Hoesli Collages/Civitas," Bernhard Hoesli: Collages, exh.
cat. , Christina Betanzos Pint, editor (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, September 2001), 3-11.
- Brandon Taylor's book Collage, Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2006
Notes
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