In celebration of the upcoming centennial anniversary of collage as an art form, we thought we would present a mini-retrospective on the last 100 years of collage. Our celebration will culminate (or begin) with the screening of a local, youth-made documentary, Life as a Collage, this Monday, November 21 from 6-8pm in collaboration with Meridian Hill Pictures and Sitar Arts Center.
Looking back at my notes from art history classes I have picked NIN9 (in honor of our NIN9 Members Gallery) artworks that I believe represent collage milestones. Here we go:
1912: We should probably start with what western art historians consider the first collage – Pablo Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning. Born out of synthetic cubism, Picasso’s painting reconstructs objects (specifically a chair) through a variety of media to “synthesize” representations. The chair caning is actually an oilcloth pasted over the canvas and a real piece of rope wraps around the edge, framing the composition.
1916-1917: According to my notes, Hans Arp created Untitled (Collage of Squares Arranged According to the Law of Chance) when he became frustrated with a drawing and tore it into pieces. He let the little squares fall to the ground and stuck down the pieces to create a work of art from chance. Interesting how harmonically chance arranged the squares.
1919: Hannah Höch’s Dada Panorama is a hilarious piece of work. Höch was in sync with the Zurich Dada movement – a movement started in response to the chaos of WWI by displaying its own chaos and absurdity in the form of art. In Dada Panorama, Höch takes a jovial picture of the German President and his advisor on holiday and dresses them in military outfits with the use of collage. Much of Dada’s legacy is remembered in the form of photomontage/ collage works like these.
1953: Henri Matisse L’Escargot (The Snail) – one of my all time favorites. One of the last and largest of Matisse’s cutout series that he completed towards the end of his life. When I saw The Snail in the Tate Modern I was struck by how massive it was and sat staring at it for several minutes. The colored squares represent a swirling snail’s shell that Matisse believed “attained a form filtered to its essentials.”
1954-55: Jasper Johns’s Flag is a classic. Johns said that he had a dream that he painted a large American flag and the next day re-created the flag by layering pieces of newspaper and painting over. The 48 stars and newspaper clippings that are visible through the paint place the flag in its historical context and questions whether it is a flag or a painting.
1956: Richard Hamilton Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing is a layering of multiple advertisements. A post-war collage by London-based artist Richard Hamilton, this piece embodies themes of vanity, consumerism, capitalism and eroticism.
1961: As Occupy Wall Street grips the nation and the national media, Robert Rauschenberg’s combine painting entitled Wall Street is perfectly relevant for our list of milestone collages. This combine painting merges sculpture and painting to build a work that goes beyond the restraints of the canvas. Wall Street supposedly refers to Rauschenberg’s Manhattan neighborhood – the predominantly white and black community, the gritty police line, and the urban surrounding area.
1982: Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (You invest in the divinity of the masterpiece) crops from a familiar ceiling painting in the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo, and transforms it into her own artwork. Kruger further clips the image with her bold font and aggressive message, calling into question the viewer’s religion and values.
2011: Life as a Collage is a documentary that was created by seven DC students about a local art teacher, Tim Gabel, and is a reflexive portrait of a dying collage artist, his philosophies on life, art and his impact on the community. Please join us for the screening this Monday, November 21 from to 6-8pm at Hillyer Art Space, 9 Hillyer Court NW, Washington, DC 20008 in celebration of the History of Collage! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8-_6w04khU
