The Art of Collage & Romare Bearden Collage Art & Techniques

Collage From the French: coller, "to glue”; is a technique of an art production, primarily used in the visual arts, where the artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. A collage may sometimes include magazine and newspaper clippings, ribbons, paint, bits of colored or handmade papers, portions of other artwork or texts, photographs and other found objects, glued to a piece of paper or canvas. The origins of collage can be traced back hundreds of years, but this technique made a dramatic reappearance in the early 20th century as an art form of novelty. The term collage was coined by both Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in the beginning of the 20th century when collage became a distinctive part of modern art.

Techniques of collage were first used at the time of the invention of paper in China, around 200 BC. The use of collage, however, wasn't used by many people until the 10th century in Japan, when calligraphers began to apply glued paper, using texts on surfaces, when writing their poems. The technique of collage appeared in medieval Europe during the 13th century. Gold leaf panels started to be applied in Gothic cathedrals around the 15th and 16th centuries. Gemstones and other precious metals were applied to religious images, icons, and also, to coats of arms. An 18th-century example of collage art can be found in the work of Mary Delany. In the 19th century, collage methods also were used among hobbyists for memorabilia (e.g. applied to photo albums) and books (e.g. Hans Christian Andersen, Carl Spitzweg). Many institutions have attributed the beginnings of the practice of collage to Picasso and Braque in 1912, however, early Victorian photocollage suggest collage techniques were practiced in the early 1860s. In 2009, curator Elizabeth Siegel organized the exhibition: “Playing with Pictures” at the Art Institute Chicago to acknowledge collage works. The exhibition later traveled to The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Art Gallery of Ontario.

Since the advent of collage, there have been many different ways to put things together, and almost anything goes! You can use photos, 3-D objects, drawings, newspaper clippings, magazines, etc. to name a few. Collages can be made out of any specific sets of subjects, they can be numerous, and they can mean anything! They can be colorful, monochromatic, exciting or just a hodge podge of images for you to look at- they can also include type like this collage did! Hannah Hoch, “Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany”, 1919, collage of pasted papers, 90x144 cm, Staatliche Museum, Berlin.

According to the Guggenheim Museum's online art glossary, collage is an artistic concept associated with the beginnings of modernism, and entails much more than the idea of gluing something onto something else. The glued-on patches which Braque and Picasso added to their canvases offered a new perspective on painting when the patches "collided with the surface plane of the painting." Pablo Picasso, “Compotier avec fruits, violon et verre”, 1912.

Collage grew in popularity not only due to the mixed mediums; but in part because you could put so many different images into one art piece, thus telling not just one story but a lot of stories at once. Some of these “stories or themes” did not make sense, and showed images of things that would not normally occur in real life. Interpretation was in the eye of the beholder as to what was behind the theme or the story. What story would you tell with a collage if you were to tell one? What stories do the collages you’ll be seeing today tell?

Collage took on many forms after it finally took off. How would you do a collage if you had the opportunity? Luckily we’re going to find out!

One of the more famous collage artists was Romare Bearden, who was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, into a college-educated and relatively financially successful middle-class African-American family, which was not ordinary for the time, especially in the Deep South. He went to school in Pittsburgh and then graduated from NYU in Romare Bearden September 12, March 12, An extremely light-skinned African-American, he easily could have lived his life as white (which at the time was easier) but refused to do so, devoting most of his art to African-American life and the struggles of blacks to achieve respect and equality.

He began his artistic career creating scenes of the American South. Later, he endeavored to express the humanity he felt was lacking in the world after his experience in the US Army during World War II on the European front. He later returned to Paris in 1950 and studied Art History and Philosophy at the Sorbonne in 1950.

In "The Art of Romare Bearden", Ruth Fine describes his themes as "universal". ” A well-read man whose friends were other artists, writers, poets and jazz musicians, Bearden mined their worlds as well as his own for topics to explore. He took his imagery from both the everyday rituals of African American rural life in the south and urban life in the north, melding those American experiences with his personal experiences and with the themes of classical literature, religion, myth, music and daily human ritual."

Below is Bearden (right) discussing one of his paintings, Cotton Workers, with Pvt. Charles H. Alston, his first art teacher and cousin, in 1944.

Much of Romare Bearden’s art was about African Americans. He felt that art portraying the lives of African Americans did not give full value to the individual. In doing so he was able to combine abstract art with real images so that people of different cultures could grasp the subject matter of the African American culture: The people. In addition, collage’s technique of gathering several pieces together to create one assembled work “symbolizes the coming together of tradition and communities.”

Collage has become very popular, and perhaps you have done a collage lately. If not, here are some more images and inspiration, and we will get started soon!

More fun collage examples- using all sorts of things to make up the collage- they even have computer programs now that are capable of putting together one photo from thousands of different photos!

A collage made entirely out of cut paper! Look Closely!

Collages made out of comic paper of some of our favorite super heros!

Just like these collages depict, when we look at something - do we study it for meaning? It can be OUR OWN meaning, OUR OWN interpretation!

Let’s get started on our fun projects for collage! Let’s take a moment to think about what we could put in our own collages. You can take colored paper, newsprint, magazines, anything else we WANT PLUS anything that’s 3D (toothpicks, paperclips, etc..and cut and paste our collages. You can start by sketching what you want but instead of coloring it in with markers, crayons, or paint, you use paper to fill in the images from clippings – you can use small objects such as paperclips, etc…! Supplies are anything you find and want to bring to class or I will put things on the shelf in the art drawer or near the drawer in the media center. Most of all- Have fun!