Collage (/kəˈlɑːʒ/, from theFrench:coller, "to glue" or "to stick together"[1]) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in thevisual arts, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. Collage may refer to the technique as a whole, or more specifically to a two-dimensional work, assembled from flat pieces on a flat substrate, whereasassemblage typically refers to a three-dimensional equivalent.[2]
A collage may sometimes includemagazine and newspaper clippings,ribbons,paint, bits of colored or handmade papers, portions of other artwork or texts,photographs and otherfound objects, glued to a piece of paper or canvas. The origins of collage can be traced back hundreds of years, but this technique made a dramatic reappearance in the early 20th century as anart form of novelty.
Paper collage, is first known to have existed in the 10th century inJapan, whencalligraphers began to apply glued paper, using texts on surfaces, when writing theirpoems.[4] Some surviving pieces in this style are found in the collection at theNishi Hongan-ji temple, containing many volumes of theSanju Rokunin Kashu anthologies ofwaka poems.
Gold leaf panels started to be applied inGothic cathedrals around the 15th and 16th centuries.Gemstones and otherprecious metals were applied to religious images,icons, and also, tocoats of arms.[4] In the 18th centuryMary Delany, who began her collage practice at the age of 72, created 985 botanical collages she called flower Mosaicks.[5] In the 19th century, collage methods also were used formemorabilia (e.g. applied tophoto albums) and books (e.g.Hans Christian Andersen,Carl Spitzweg).[4]Many institutions have attributed the beginnings of the practice of collage to Picasso and Braque in 1912, however, early Victorian photocollage suggest collage techniques were practiced in the early 1860s.[6] Many institutions recognize these works as memorabilia for hobbyists, though they functioned as a facilitator of Victorian aristocratic collective portraiture, proof of female erudition, and presented a new mode of artistic representation that questioned the way in which photography is truthful. In 2009, curator Elizabeth Siegel organized the exhibition:Playing with Pictures[7] atthe Art Institute Chicago to acknowledge collage works byAlexandra of Denmark andMary Georgina Filmer among others. In 2019, the National Galleries of Scotland held historically critical exhibit titled, Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage which featured 250 works on paper, the earliest example being a "flap anatomy" or "fugitive sheet" made in 1573.[8][9]
Hannah Höch,Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919, collage of pasted papers, 90x144 cm, Staatliche Museum,Berlin
Despite the pre-twentieth-century use of collage-like application techniques, some art authorities argue that collage, properly speaking, did not emerge until after 1900, in conjunction with the early stages of modernism.
For example, theTate Gallery's online art glossary states that collage "was first used as an artists' technique in the twentieth century".[10] According to theGuggenheim Museum's online art glossary, collage is an artistic concept associated with the beginnings of modernism, and entails much more than the idea of gluing something onto something else. The glued-on patches which Braque and Picasso added to their canvases offered a new perspective on painting when the patches "collided with the surface plane of the painting".[11] In this perspective, collage was part of a methodical reexamination of the relation between painting and sculpture, and these new works "gave each medium some of the characteristics of the other", according to the Guggenheim essay. Furthermore, these chopped-up bits of newspaper introduced fragments of externally referenced meaning into the collision: "References to current events, such as the war in the Balkans, and to popular culture enriched the content of their art." This juxtaposition of signifiers, "at once serious and tongue-in-cheek", was fundamental to the inspiration behind collage: "Emphasizing concept and process over end product, collage has brought the incongruous into meaningful congress with the ordinary."[11]
Collage in the modernist sense began withCubist paintersGeorges Braque andPablo Picasso. Snippets and fragments of different and unrelated subject matter made up Cubism collages, orpapier collé, which gave them a deconstructed form and appearance.[12] According to some sources, Picasso was the first to use the collage technique in oil paintings. According to theGuggenheim Museum's online article about collage, Braque took up the concept of collage itself before Picasso, applying it to charcoal drawings. Picasso adopted collage immediately after (and could be the first to use collage in paintings, as opposed to drawings):
"It was Braque who purchased a roll of simulated oak-grain wallpaper and began cutting out pieces of the paper and attaching them to his charcoal drawings. Picasso immediately began to make his own experiments in the new medium."[11]
Surrealist artists have made extensive use of collage and have swayed away from the still-life focus of Cubists. Rather, in keeping with surrealism, surrealist artists such as Joseph Cornell created collages consisting of fictional and strange, dream-like scenes.[12]Cubomania is a collage made by cutting an image into squares which are then reassembledautomatically or at random. Collages produced using a similar, or perhaps identical, method are calledetrécissements byMarcel Mariën from a method first explored by Mariën.Surrealist games such asparallel collage use collective techniques of collage making.
Another technique is that ofcanvas collage, which is the application, typically with glue, of separately paintedcanvas patches to the surface of a painting's main canvas. Well known for use of this technique is British artistJohn Walker in hispaintings of the late 1970s, but canvas collage was already an integral part of themixed media works of such American artists asConrad Marca-Relli andJane Frank by the early 1960s. The intensely self-criticalLee 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.
Kurt Schwitters,untitled (Chessman), 1941, collage, oil, paper and wood on plywood
Kurt Schwitters began experimenting with Wood Collages in the 1920s after already having given up painting for paper collages.[15] He was creating wood collage at least as early as his 'Merz Picture with Candle', dating from the mid to late 1920s.
Georges Braque initiated use of paper collage by cutting out pieces of simulated oak-grain wallpaper and attaching them to his own charcoal drawings.[11] Thus, the idea of gluing wood to a picture was implicit from the start of at least Cubist Collage, since the paper used was a commercial product manufactured to look like wood.
It was during a fifteen-year period of intense experimentation beginning in the mid-1940s thatLouise Nevelson evolved hersculptural wood collages, assembled from found scraps, including parts offurniture, 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'sSky Cathedral (1958), theMuseum of Modern Art catalogue states, "As a rectangular plane to be viewed from the front,Sky Cathedral has the pictorial quality of a painting..."[16][17] Yet such pieces also present themselves as massive walls or monoliths, which can sometimes be viewed from either side, or even lookedthrough.
Artist George Morrison made his first Wood Collage in 1974 with his work titled, Collage IX: Landscape. This is described as having been made from "driftwood he gathered along the shores of Lake Superior."[18] Morrison has said of these Wood Collages that they were "paintings made of wood."[19]
Much wood collage art is considerably smaller in scale, framed and hung as apainting would be. It usually features pieces of wood, wood shavings, or scraps, assembled on a 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, andtextural 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 asdriftwood, 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 (seeCollage and modernism). 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 ofsemiotic collision. A truncated wooden chair or staircasenewel 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; therefore, the characteristic contextual disruptions associated with the collage idea, as it originated with Braque and Picasso, cannot really take place. (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.)
Known as Découpage inFrance, (from the verbdécouper, 'to cut out') it attained great popularity during the 17th and 18th centuries. Many advanced techniques were developed during this time, and items could take up to a year to complete due to the many coats and sandings applied. Some famous or aristocratic practitioners includedMarie Antoinette,Madame de Pompadour, andBeau Brummell. In fact the majority of decoupage enthusiasts attribute the beginning of decoupage to 17th centuryVenice. However it was known before this time in Asia.
The most likely origin of decoupage is thought to beEast Siberianfunerary art.Nomadic tribes would use cut out felts to decorate the tombs of their deceased. From Siberia, the practice came toChina, and by the 12th century, cut out paper was being used to decorate lanterns, windows, boxes and other objects. In the 17th century,Italy, especially inVenice, was at the forefront of trade with theFar East and it is generally thought that it is through these trade links that the cut outpaper decorations made their way into Europe.
In the early part of the 20th century, Decoupage artists, began experimenting with a less realistic and more abstract style. 20th-century artists who produced decoupage works includePablo Picasso andHenri Matisse. One of Matisse's decoupage works is titled,Blue Nude II.
Grete Stern,Sueño No. 28: Love without Illusion, 1951, gelatin silver print
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 ascompositing. In 1930s Japan, photographer and poetKansuke Yamamoto experimented with collage and photomontage, including the hand-colored photo collageThe Developing Thought of a Human … Mist and Bedroom (1932), which combines newspaper clippings with photographic imagery.[20]
The collage titled,Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? was created in 1956 by Richard Hamilton for the catalogue of theThis Is Tomorrow exhibition inLondon,England in which it was reproduced in black and white. In addition, the piece was used in posters for the exhibit.[21] Richard Hamilton has subsequently created several works in which he reworked the subject and composition of the pop art collage, including a 1992 version featuring a female bodybuilder.
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 as 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 8½ × 11 inches. Bearden fixed the imagery with an emulsion that he then applied with hand roller. 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 andoffset lithography until the widespread use ofdigital 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 asAdobe Photoshop, Pixel image editor, andGIMP. 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,[22] theatre, illustration and graphics in a seamless photographic whole.
Digital collage is the technique of usingcomputer tools in collage creation to encouragechance associations of disparate visual elements and the subsequent transformation of the visual results through the use ofelectronic media. It is commonly used in the creation ofdigital art using programs such as Photoshop. This approach bridges traditional collage art with contemporary digital storytelling, contributing to the evolution ofnew media aesthetics.
A 3D collage (often referred to as an Assemblage) is an art of putting altogether three-dimensional objects such as rocks, beads, buttons, coins, or even soil to form a new whole or a new object. Examples can include houses, bead circles, etc.
In the African American art historical tradition,Romare Bearden – who used collage, and more specifically “photomontage” to experiment withW.E.B. DuBois’ concept of “double consciousness” during the 1960s - is considered to be the first prominent Black artist to take interest with the form in the United States. Responding to political actions of theCivil Rights Movement and theBlack Power Movement, Bearden used collage techniques in both his professional work as an artist, and as a mode of sociality by founding theSpiral Group, a New York City collective of Black artists gathered shortly after theMarch on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963. Although ultimately unsustainable, groups like Spiral were critical for the development of radical Black aesthetics during theBlack Arts Movement between 1965 and 1975. As Patricia Hills explains in “Cultural Legacies and the Transformation of the Cubist Collage Aesthetic by Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Other African American Artists,” many African American “artists worked in styles in the cubist tradition” during and following the formal dissolution of the BAM, perhaps due to a discernible resonance between blackness and “the structure of collage cubism, which gives parity to the shapes of both forms and spatial intervals.”[23]
Increasing attention has been given to the category “Black Collage” since the exhibitionMultiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage traveled to multiple locations across the United States between 2023 and 2024. The show, which started off at theFrist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, offered itself as a collection of Black art exploring the form’s ability to “render an endless range of possibilities that collectively reject ideas of monolithic blackness.”[24] Mobilizing “collage as a tool for contention,” the dozens of artists compiled for this show worked to both “create their own cosmologies” and make “histories visible within Western art history that have systematically excluded [Black people] as creative beings.”[25]Kerry James Marshall,Rashid Johnson,Lorna Simpson,Mickalene Thomas,Wangechi Mutu,Jacob Lawrence,Kara Walker, andBetye Saar are among the Black artists featured in the show, as well as on the popular Instagram page “@Blackcollagists” established by Teri Henderson in 2020. Scholarly writing inMultiplicity’s catalogue book identifies collage techniques as uniquely apt for contending with abstract messages about Black being and history; meaning that what can now be somewhat easily distinguished as a “Black Collage” comes from a long genealogy of diasporic and African American aesthetic, political, and social practices.
ThoughLe Corbusier and other architects used techniques that are akin to collage, collage as a theoretical concept only became widely discussed after the publication ofCollage City (1978) byColin Rowe and Fred Koetter.
Rowe and Koetter were not, however, 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 ofModernism and saw collage with itsnon-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-calledTexas Rangers, a group ofarchitects who taught at theUniversity of Texas for a while. Another member of that group wasBernhard Hoesli, a Swiss architect who went on to become an important educator at theETH-Zurich. Whereas for Rowe, collage was more ametaphor 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.
The concept of collage has crossed the boundaries of visual arts. Inmusic, with the advances on recording technology,avant-garde artists started experimenting with cutting and pasting since the middle of the twentieth century. In the 1960s,George Martin created collages of recordings while producing the records ofThe Beatles. In 1967pop artistPeter Blake made the collage for the cover of the Beatles' seminal albumSgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In the 1970s and 1980s, the likes ofChristian Marclay and the groupNegativland reappropriated old audio in new ways. By the 1990s and 2000s, with the popularity of thesampler, it became apparent that "musical collages" had become the norm forpopular music, especially inrap,hip-hop andelectronic music.[26] In 1996,DJ Shadow released the groundbreaking album,Endtroducing....., made entirely of preexisting recorded material mixed together in audible collage. In the same year, New York City-based artist, writer, and musician, Paul D. Miller akaDJ Spooky's work pushed the work of sampling into a museum and gallery context as an art practice that combined DJ culture's obsession with archival materials as sound sources on his albumSongs of a Dead Dreamer and in his booksRhythm Science (2004) andSound Unbound (2008) (MIT Press). In his books, "mash-up" and collage based mixes of authors, artists, and musicians such asAntonin Artaud,James Joyce,William S. Burroughs, andRaymond Scott were featured as part of a what he called "literature of sound." In 2000,The Avalanches releasedSince I Left You, a musical collage consisting of approximately 3,500 musical sources (i.e., samples).[27]
Collage is sometimes used alone or in combination with other techniques inartists' books, especially in one-off unique books rather than as reproduced images in published books.[28]
Collage novels are books with images selected from other publications and collaged together following a theme or narrative.
Thebible ofdiscordianism, thePrincipia 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.
Collage is utilized infashion design in the sketching process, as part of mixed media illustrations, where drawings together with diverse materials such as paper, photographs, yarns or fabric bring ideas into designs.
Collage film is traditionally defined as, “A film that juxtaposes fictional scenes with footage taken from disparate sources, such as newsreels.” Combiningdifferent types of footage can have various implications depending on the director's approach. Collage film can also refer to the physical collaging of materials onto filmstrips. Canadian filmmakerArthur Lipsett was especially renowned for his collage films, many of which were made from the cutting room floors of the National Film Board studios.
The use ofCGI, orcomputer-generated imagery, can be considered a form of collage, especially when animated graphics are layered over traditional film footage. At certain moments duringAmélie (Jean-Pierre Juenet, 2001), themise en scène takes on a highly fantasized style, including fictitious elements like swirling tunnels of color and light. David O. Russell'sI Heart Huckabees (2004) incorporates CGI effects to visually demonstrate philosophical theories explained by the existential detectives (played byLily Tomlin andDustin Hoffman). In this case, the effects serve to enhance clarity, while adding a surreal aspect to an otherwise realistic film.
When collage uses existing works, the result is what somecopyrightscholars call aderivative work. The collage thus 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 ofsound collage (such aship hop music), some court rulings effectively have eliminated thede minimis doctrine as a defense tocopyright infringement, thus shifting collage practice away from non-permissive uses relying onfair use or de minimis protections, and towardlicensing.[29] Examples of musical collage art that have run afoul of modern copyright areThe Grey Album andNegativland'sU2.
The copyright status of visual works is less troubled, although still ambiguous. For instance, some visual collage artists have argued that thefirst-sale doctrine protects their work. The first-sale doctrine prevents copyright holders from controlling consumptive uses after the "first sale" of their work, although theNinth Circuit has held that the first-sale doctrine does not apply toderivative works.[30] The de minimis doctrine and thefair use exception also provide important defenses against claimed copyright infringement.[31] TheSecond Circuit in October, 2006, held that artistJeff Koons was not liable for copyright infringement because his incorporation of a photograph into a collage painting was fair use.[32]
Mark Jarzombek, "Bernhard Hoesli Collages/Civitas", Bernhard Hoesli: Collages, exh. cat., Christina Betanzos Pint, editor (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, September 2001), 3-11.
Taylor, Brandon.Urban walls: a generation of collage in Europe & America: Burhan Dogançay with François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Robert Rauschenberg, Mimmo Rotella, Jacques Villeglé, Wolf Vostell.ISBN9781555952884;OCLC191318119 (New York: Hudson Hills Press; [Lanham, MD]: Distributed in the United States by National Book Network, 2008)
Excavations (Ontological Museum Acquisitions) by Richard Misiano-Genovese
^Patrick Elliott; Freya Gowrley; and Yuval Etgar (2020).Cut and Paste 400 Years of Collage. National Galleries of Scotland.ISBN9781911054313.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Hills, Patricia (2023).Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage [exhibition, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee, September 15 - December 31, 2023 ; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, February 18 - May 12, 2024 ; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., July 6 - September 22, 2024]. Nashville: Frist Art Museum. p. 60.ISBN978-0-300-27296-3.
^Oliver, Valerie (2023). Delmez, Kathryn E.; Frist Art Museum (Nashville, Tenn.); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Phillips Collection (eds.).Multiplicity: Blackness in contemporary American collage. Nashville, TN: Frist Art Museum. p. 82.ISBN978-0-300-27296-3.
^Ortíz, Maria Elena (2023). Delmez, Kathryn E.; Frist Art Museum (Nashville, Tenn.); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Phillips Collection (eds.).Multiplicity: Blackness in contemporary American collage. Nashville, TN: Frist Art Museum. p. 74.ISBN978-0-300-27296-3.
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