Themes

Let's begin with some etymology to situate ourselves: collage comes from the French ‘coller’, which means ‘to stick together’. Collage has enveloped art for centuries, whether it be from the invention of paper in 200 BC China to Georges Braque (1882 - 1963) creating the first ‘papier collé’ with ‘Fish Dish and Glass’ (1912) in Sorgues. Its huge resurgence in the early 20th century permeated the art world and changed it forever. Its renaissance is marked by Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) and Georges Braque coining the term ‘papier collé’.  It could be postulated that the beginnings of collage ignited modern art. 

​

Collage sources eclectic signifiers from contemporary culture (bus tickets, newspaper clippings, found photographs, advertisements), and arranging them in new ways, creates a new meaning from the understood and widely accepted social landscape. Additionally, the stuck-down fragments colliding with the painted surface establish a new plane for examining the concept of linear perspective and the relationship between painting and sculpture.

​

Collage catalysed the development of cubism, surrealism and dadaism. Cubists' used collage to conjure up new visual perspectives in still life paintings. The surrealists took this further and used collage to evoke dreamlike, irrational, and sometimes unsettling associations. The surrealists' goal was to disrupt logical perception and create unexpected juxtapositions, reflecting the workings of the unconscious mind. By assembling disparate images, texts, and materials, artists like Max Ernst, with his frottage and grattage techniques, and Hannah Höch, through her photomontages, pushed the boundaries of reality, turning everyday fragments into surreal compositions that challenged conventional meaning. The dadaists harnessed collage to express their non-art sentiments in reaction to the First World War. The later movements of Pop Art (in Britain and America) and Nouveau Realisme (in Europe) also employed collage.

​

Collage itself bred many variants. Cubomania is the cutting of an image into squares and then rearranging them. Parallel collage was started by surrealists as a method of collective work. Canvas collage, pioneered by American artists Conrad Marca-Relli and Jane Frank in the 1960s and British artist John Walker in the 1970s, cuts out separately painted canvases and sticks them onto the main canvas to produce the artwork. Notoriously, American artist Lee Krasner (1908 - 1984) destroyed her paintings and rearranged the fragments to form a new work. Wood collage took hold with Kurt Schwitters’ ‘Merz Picture with Candle’ (1925). Louise Nevelson produced much bigger sculptural wooden collages exemplified by ‘Sky Cathedral’ (1958), made from found architectural remnants and other objects. Decoupage was proliferated by Matisse and Picasso and typified by Matisse’s ‘Blue Nude II’ (1952). Photomontage is cutting out various photographs to create a composite image. Some famous examples are Richard Hamilton’s, ‘Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’ (1956) and Grete Stern’s, ‘Sueño No. 28: Love without Illusion’ (1951). 

​

Artist focus: John Stezaker, Peter Blake, Lottie Stoddart.