Collage
Read this article to understand the development of collage, a relatively new approach to creating 2D media.
Collage is a medium that uses found objects or images, such as newspaper or other printed material, illustrations, photographs, and even string or fabric, to create images. It also refers to works of art (paintings, drawings, and prints) that
include pieces of collage within them. Collage was made popular in western art history by Pablo Picasso and the cubists. The German artist Kurt Schwitters used collage as the dominant formal element in his works from the 1930s. His work Opened by Customs is an excellent example of the importance of collage to the modern art movement in Europe before World War II.
Artist Romare Bearden used collages to comment on urban life and the black experience in America. His Patchwork Quilt presents us with a figure in profile reminiscent of an Egyptian painting. The starkness of the black figure surrounded by a collage of patterned fabric and dark background
color creates a shallow space and dynamic composition.
The Japanese American artist Paul Horiuchi began as a painter but, by mid-career, used collage almost exclusively. Mesa from 1960 is an abstract rendition of the geologic
feature: an isolated hill with steeply sloping sides and a flat top (compare it to Joseph Goldberg's Spring Mesa in the section about encaustic painting). Horiuchi's art is a successful blending of the formal elements of cubist ideas with
the oriental aesthetic of his Japanese heritage. His most ambitious piece is Seattle Mural, a huge glass mosaic commissioned for the site of the 1962 World's Fair. Though not collage, this immense work mimics the artist's collage technique
in its shapes and composition.
Seattle Mural, Paul Horiuchi, 1962, glass mosaic. The Seattle Center
Saylor Academy Knowledge Check
Source: Christopher Gildow, http://opencourselibrary.org/art-100-art-appreciation/
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