The Definition of Collage Art
The term "collage" comes from the french verb for "to glue." The "Oxford English Dictionary" defines "collage" as a form of art in which various materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric are arranged and stuck to a backing. Here are some facts about collage and its history.
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History
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Cubist George Braques may have coined the term "collage" in the early part of the twentieth century to describe the technique he applied to his cubist works. But some also argue that collage art began as far back as ancient Japan, when calligraphers glued letters to paper.
Types
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Collage has become a staple of modern art, with different off-shoots of practice. Besides the original collage form, there is also assemblage, photomontage, and digital, architectural, musical and literary collage forms.
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Assemblage
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Assemblage is a form of collage that relies on found objects. Famous assemblage artists like Kurt Schwitters and Robert Rauschenberg used garbage and other discarded items to create sculptures and installations.
Photomontage/Digital Montage
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Photomontage is simply a collage made from photographs. Similarly, digital montage is a collage of digital images made with a design program like Photoshop.
Architectural Collage
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Architectural collage is about creating visual disruptions in the uniformity of a building. Architects like Bernhard Hoesli, as well as famous modernists like Le Courbusier, employed this technique.
Musical and Literary Collage
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In music, collage is now more commonly referred to as "sampling," where a piece of music is taken from one source and applied to a new piece. In literature, collage can be an effect in the text of layering imagery or of inserting text from a different source.
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