History of Collage

Techniques of collage were first used with 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 glued bits of paper and fabric together to create a backdrop for the brushstrokes of their poetry. Paper, gold leaf, gemstones and other precious metals were applied to religious images, icons, and coats of arms around the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 19th century, collage methods were used in photo albums and on lampshades, room screens and walls. Stamps, photos, feathers, memorabilia, etc. were used in combination as decoration and to enhance space and objects. Paper cutouts, wood block prints and marbled papers were also popular; these were used on recipes, theatre posters and in books. Hans Christian Andersen pasted paper cutout figures into his books as the illustrations.

Pablo Picasso is generally attributed as the first artist to use collage in fine art by gluing a piece of patterned oilcloth to a cubist still life in 1912. His Still Life with Chair Caining is a collage of oil paint, oilcloth, pasted paper and rope. Georges Braques, followed Picasso, and used wallpaper in his artwork. Both artists continued to experiment with various handmade papers or papiers collés - the art of pasting papers- as an extension of Cubist principles. They invented a new kind of imagery, using textured and printed papers and simulated wood patterns on their drawings and paintings. The use of foreign materials in fine art brought on an outburst of controversy with each experiment. But the critics outrage only fueled the avant-garde’s creativity in this technique. Cubists used mostly paper and paint, sometimes in a patchwork quilt fashion. Futurists incorporated typography for political commentary and added found objects to connect art with the real world. Dadaists found collage an ideal means of expressing their negative stance on traditional art, using absurd combination of materials for their shock value. Psychology was just beginning to come to the forefront in the early part of the 20th century, and this new science of the mind led Surrealists to see the random selection and placement of materials in collage as a way for unconscious thoughts to reveal themselves.

Collage was also used as a means of preparing a piece of artwork. In the 1930’s, Henri Matisse used cut-paper shapes to prepare for commissioned pieces that he executed in other media. A decade and a half later, to demonstrate his skill of “drawing with scissors”, he published a small portfolio of twenty color plates of his cutout designs. Matisse changed two-dimensional art forever with his extreme simplification of composition and flat-color shapes. Joseph Cornell’s boxed assemblages began the Abstract Expressionists’ exploration of collage as an art form in the early 1940s. Ad Reinhardt, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Romare Bearden each utilized collage as a means of expression. Random tossed objects, dripped paint, dramatic graphite line were elements of Jackson Pollack’s creativity. Romare Bearden combined oil paint and cut-photo images to enhance his style of combining African and Afro-American culture and symbols with stylized realism. The media used, cut, torn, and layered bring these artists’ paintings to life.

Today, we can find collage in architecture, music, literary works, and electronic media as well as in printmaking, photography, painting, sculpture and stationary. Collage it still among the list of major media. It is a significant means of expression allowing the artist to explore ideas and broaden techniques sometimes even make statements. Collage allows for the different elements of art become more flexible than with traditional artist mediums, freeing the artists’ ability to express.

1. Collage for the Soul by Holly Harrison and Paula Grasdal; Quarry Books 2005

2. Collage Sourcebook by Jennifer L. Atkinson, Holly Harrison and Paula Grasdal; Quarry Books 2005

3. Collage by Brandon Taylor, Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2006

4. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collage

5. www.sunnyday.org/art_lesson_plans/collage_history