Tag: collage

This week, I have been given the challenge of making a series of collages based around The Raincoat Girl. I needed to first find inspiration. I looked at collage work by both artists and designers, from past to contemporary. This opened my mind to the infinite possibilities of cutting and pasting.

I’ve been wanting to read this book for a while and now I had the perfect excuse.

Jelle Martens

I was drawn to the use of geometric shapes within his work. In Motocross, the background images are obscured from view. As the viewer, we see glimpses of photos and text. These act as visual clues. This ambiguity, I feel makes the work interesting. We can almost piece together our own stories of what is going on behind the triangular shapes in the foreground.

Another of Marten’s methods is to cut up several images into geometric shapes and re-arrange them into new compositions:

Ellery James Roberts

The thing I love about collage is that artists create an image that is readable but at the same time impossible.  Collage allows us to use realistic images and merge them to create something surreal. This piece is arranged into thirds foreground section, midsection, and the backgrounds. This collage looks neat and tidy but also interesting and imaginative.

Damien Tran

Damien Tran is a designer and printmaker based in Berlin. He combines collage with screen printing in his designs. He uses his own photographs within his work.

I really like the collage pieces cut from around an image. The shapes are ambiguous and left to interpretation while creating a path for the eye to follow across the piece. I like text in the composition, used as a visual element. His limited use of colour makes his work easy to read and his use of white space is pleasing. In his Exhibition poster for Quiet Violence, there is a clear background and foreground. I like the variety of implied textures. Each collage piece is something abstract, he may have cut one piece out from a magazine, a pattern from somebody’s dress.

John Stezaker

I looked at work by contemporary artist, John Stezaker. He uses old imagery in his collages, such as photos of film stars from a past era. This makes his work look like it was made in the early 20^th century. He creates depth by layering collage pieces. Some pieces almost seem like optical illusions, where they can be viewed in several ways. He uses silhouettes and outlines. For example, in the piece Untitled, we see a moth, a woman, and a man simultaneously. By layering them in such a way, he creates a different meaning. Each element, being within each other, combines them together. Characteristics of a moth are within a man, characteristics of both are within a woman. Is this all taking place within the mind of the woman? These compositions lead the viewer to ask questions.

Dada

The conditions that gave rise to dadaism were a protest against the war. The Dadaists were the group of artists who revolutionised collage making in their artwork. This was in the time when photographs were just starting to be published in print. Hannah Höch worked for a newspaper company and had access to these images first hand. The movement began in 1920 in Berlin. Three artists present were Max Ernst, John Heartfield and Hannah Höch. The artists had a variety of motives. Some wanted to re-establish a sense of community in the aftermath of the war, some were activists and others wanted to develop their career. They each collaborated on exhibitions and publications. Dada was stage on the way to Surrealism.

Max Ernst combined images from medical books, catalogues for industrial equipment and botanical biological course books. His work invokes a sense of timelessness and a dreamlike quality.

This is different to the photomontage style of John heart field. John Heartfield was interested in getting across a political message within his collages. He was interested in creating a message that could communicate through mass media. His work was used to critique the abuse of power, which he felt passionate about. Both artists were not content to show images of the raw cut and paste style, for example, used by the Dadaist Kurt Schwitters. They used fragments of collage to create whole looking images, which are neat and believable. Ernst was interested in the world of the psyche, Heartfield, the political environment around him, and Hannah Höch liked to overlay elements of both within her work.

Höch used images from mass media, transforming them into images that conveyed personal meanings. She explored issues of gender roles, such as the image of the “new woman”. (This image created an expectation of women and was directly linked to consumerism and social agendas.)

Priestess; Priesterin, c.1930-1934 (collage with gold and wash heightening laid down on card) (bridgemanimages.com)

Heartfield has used something similar within his collage, where he combines a 2D dollar sign with realistically formed figures. The result is surprising and amusing.