The word collage derives from the French verb coller which means “to stick”.  And sticking was a quite literal description of a technique employed by Georges Braque in 1912 which laid the foundation for all Western art collage techniques that followed.  He created his first ’papier collé’ when he used imitation wood grain paper and paint mixed with sand to make Fruit Dish and Glass.  Pablo Picasso, being Braque’s colleague and friend, took papier collé further, towards what we understand today as collage.  Once he learned of Braque’s use of the technique he began to create works that included paper and other materials such as earth and string.

The process was taken up and again furthered by, amongst many others, Max Ernst, Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters, Johannes Theodor Baargeld, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Benjamin Péret, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Eluard, Salvador Dalí, André Breton, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Man Ray and Georges Hugnet.  They all employed the technique at one time or another and widened the range of things they stuck in or on their works. They began to include more raw materials such as cotton, wire and wood, and most importantly, they began using ready-made, or pre-existing things in their art work. The terms photocollage and photomontage refer to the exclusive use of photographs, and two duos, Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann, and John Heartfield and George Grozs, claim to have first used the term photomontage to describe their work circa 1918. 

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While collage uses primarily two dimensional ready-made things such as typographical elements (words), images and photographs taken from books, postcards, newspapers, magazines, tickets, pamphlets, etc., assemblage is the art form that began to use ready-made and found three dimensional objects. All in all, collage and assemblage art came about when artists began to use any and all available sources that were ripe for cannibalising into these new art forms. 

So it was at the start of the 20th century that collage had its beginnings and became a recognised and reproduced technique for the Cubists, Dadaists, Surrealists and beyond.

It is through the use of the ready-made taken out of context and combined without attempt to disguise fragmentation and multiplicity that the surprise riches of collage materialise.  Not only does this later collage technique offer new freedom in creation and entirely new possibilities in the work created, it is also easily employed as critique or satire by bringing together elements societal, cultural and political that one would not normally conceptualise in unison, but that viewed together can offer new insight into, understanding of, and meaning for the human condition, or indeed the human conditions experienced across the globe.

There are various interpretations of the meaning or significance of collage generally, including those that dismiss it entirely as child’s play without any artistic merit.  In defence of collage, however, the writer suggests that the fact that collages and collage-making may seem like child’s play is not reason to diminish or negate its value, and certainly ought not to allow a viewer to believe collage is always simplistic.

In the case of its inception collage may be taken as having been a new way of making art by artists who were reacting against the established art canon and traditions, and who wanted to expand existing definitions and techniques of art, namely as against high formalism and the imperative of beauty.  However, in the case of the Dadaists and Surrealists, they employed collage consciously and can be credited with knowingly exploiting the fragmentary and accidental aspects of collage.  Their collage works resulted in unexpected juxtapositions that revelled in the seemingly random and necessarily conspicuous sticking together of decidedly un-artisitic materials to create art.

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It may be no accident that this technique came into being when it did.  The early 20th century was a time when mechanical reproduction and mass industrialisation were spreading quickly throughout Western societies, as well as a time when those societies were experiencing monumental breakdowns and their own literal fragmentations before, during and between two world wars.  The transition to wide-spread industrialisation allowed for the proliferation of ready-made products while the fragmented remnants of, and contributions to, socio-politico-cultural breakdowns were ready-made grist for the artistic machine.  Collage was the obvious technique to employ as it paralleled the societal trajectories at a time of the universal availability of many material things throughout Western societies while the social fabric was shredding.  It can also be suggested that the artists’ acts of sticking things together was a very rational response to, and strategy for negotiating, the reality around them in which everything was tearing apart.

As testament to the importance and significance of the form and technique is the fact that collage has longevity, it persists and is indeed prevalent today almost a century after its birth.  The technique of sticking things together, namely images and words, is now commonplace.  A contemporary artist who uses the technique to great effect is Barbara Kruger, but we also see examples everyday in print media (indeed often from, imitating or inspired by Barbara Kruger), whether it be in advertising, e.g. poster campaigns and billboards, in educational, conference or seminar materials and presentations, in school yearbooks and almost anywhere that media is present.  And of course these are only examples to be found in public. 

Once we enter private living quarters we find that collage has also become a favoured way of decorating. Our homes house both personal collages that preserve our memories and art collages to add to the decor.  This is precisely because of, as Max Ernst said so well, the poetic spark which jumps across….

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