Collage: Part one

In a world that produces vast quantities of waste perhaps one of the best ways to deal with the issue is to work in collage. This has several advantages.
The first is that whatever you do it will have a direct relationship with the world. Whether you are going to make figurative narratives from the materials you select or abstract compositions, in either case the materials themselves will carry part of the work's meaning for you.
The second advantage you automatically have when using collage is that the materials begin to suggest ideas as you move them around and into new conjunctions with each other. There will be moments when individual elements 'fit' with each other and the more collages you make the more you become 'attuned' to what fits and what doesn't.
John Stezaker's collages are a case in point. He keeps large image files and when he is working tries out image after image, looking for that perfect fit. When it works his images feel as if they have simply 'arrived', the juxtaposition looks as if the elements were made for each other.  By choosing photographic imagery of faded movie stars he is able to question how the photograph can work as a documentation of truth, holder of memory, and symbol of modern culture, all at the same time. In his Marriage series he uses publicity shots of old film stars, often overlapping them to make hybrids of male and female characters. By using old photographs we are reminded of how photographs are stylised, the further away in time from the present the more their making is revealed as a series of choices and not a simple indexical record.

John Stezaker: From the Marriage series

The 'fit' between male and female movie stars above is very astute, the chins line up and so do the eyes and hair lines, the particular lighting in both is characteristic of studio star photographs, therefore they tonally fit and by having these two characters join to form a horizontal image, we are given a suggestion that they are lying down, in a state of 'revere' or 'daydream', perhaps each character dreaming of the other. Both of course are manufactured by the Hollywood machine, the 'theatre of dreams'. The other issue about the above image is that Stezaker simply cuts one image straight through and places it on top of the other and we can see clearly the misalignment of the two photographs because the white borders show where the images overlap. He clearly wants us to remember this is a collage and that we should not be seduced into it being anything else but that.

Kurt Schwitters



After its early introduction in the Cubist work of Picasso and Braque, two figures dominate the early history of collage and to some extent they also set out the two main directions in which it will become used. Kurt Schwitters used to carry a suitcase around with him so that he could collect street detritus; ticket stubs, discarded papers, scraps of cardboard etc. and with these constructed what he called his 'Merz'. He wanted to both create connections with and celebrate the connections between all the various things in the world. However the underlying principle around which he did this was the formal play of abstract composition. He would bring his various collage elements together using structuralist principles and paved the way for the use of collage as a method of building abstractions. Max Ernst took a much more figurative approach, using collage's potential to release unexpected imagery and as a heightened form of imaginative play.

Max Ernst

Both these artists had an enormous influence on the development of collage as a genre, it could be argued that they stand for the two central planks of modernism, abstraction and Surrealism.
Collage has a simple way of constantly refreshing itself. Because society's waste materials are constantly changing as the relentless march of consumerism produces more and more goods, every generation of artists using collage is faced with materials which reflect the particular moment they live through. A classic example is Rauschenberg, the imagery for his Dante's Inferno prints is located firmly in the 1960s.

Strangely enough, several collage artists have resorted to using already dated imagery in their work. Stezaker in using old movie stills and Ernst himself in using old Victorian illustrations. This is perhaps indicative that many collage artists are also collectors and lovers of memorabilia. There is also an issue of how nostalgia gives renewed meaning to things. An ordinary cigarette package when seen again 20 years later tells a story of the 'design of the times'.

It was Rauschenberg who termed the word 'assemblage', which indicated a point whereby the objects collaged into art pieces were becoming larger and more three dimensional, the line between drawing (collage) and sculpture (assemblage) being somewhat blurred and always seeking definition. For instance Sarah Sze's 3D installations are clearly linked together by linear relationships and they stem from her interest in drawing.

Sarah Sze

Hew Locke is another artist that I would categorise as someone who thinks through drawing, but as an image maker, rather than a formalist.

Hew Locke, Jungle Queen II, 2003

Hew Locke makes his assemblages of the Queen out of thousands of plastic toys, flowers, fruits etc. but the underlying image could be the flat 2D image of a postage stamp. There is an interesting video of him talking about his work here.

The line between sculpture and drawing is very fine and installations often tread right on the border. For instance this collage on sticks (below) by Geoffrey Farmer uses the one sidedness of drawing and flat imagery to his advantage, which also gains presence from the fact that a virtual forest of wooden staves is used to hold the imagery in place.

  Farmer's work also reminds us of the importance of presentation and how when given a certain type of space to exhibit in you sometimes have to be very inventive in how you think about audience engagement. In this case he has used a corridor space really well.

Finally, there are artists such as Mark Lewis that bring together traditional drawing techniques with collage. He makes graphite surfaces and drawn elements that he then cuts up and reassembles. In this way he can have the control over his materials that a traditional artist has and also benefit from the ability of collage working to allow him to 'find' a composition that suits the dynamic he is looking for. The shaped edges of his works are a natural consequence of the working process.  

Mark Lewis: Graphite and paper collage

Collage and its cousin assemblage, are ways of working that didn't exist before the 20th century, so they could be regarded as 'the' modes of expression that are particular to our times of Capitalist mass production. There are always new approaches to working with found materials and as I stated at the beginning of this post by using waste materials to make your work, you begin the process of also commenting on the state of a society that produces so much.

If you want to read more about this a good start is; The Age of Collage: Contemporary Collage in Modern Art  by Krohn, Busch and Hellige

This post on collage also overlaps somewhat with some of the comments made in an earlier post about drawing on top of photographs and the work of Robert Rauschenberg.                               


See also:
Collage part two
Collage part three
Collage part four

Collage and copyright law

The torn edge in collage