Day 2543: Three squares: collage.

3 Squares: 3 junk mail collage,

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The women who invented collage – 

long before Picasso and co.

 

Denied the opportunity to paint or sculpt, well-to-do ladies went to town with scissors and glue, as this fascinating new exhibition shows

by Claudia Massie

Left, Kate Gough's Album (c.1875-80) and, on the right, Mary Watson's Scrapbook (1821)

The art-history books will tell you that sometime around 1912, Picasso invented collage, or, actually, perhaps it was Braque. What they mean is that sometime around 1912 a man of sufficient standing took up a technique that had been quietly practised in largely domestic spheres by a largely female army of amateurs, and applied it in his own work. Cue the universal astonishment of observers who pretended they had never seen such a thing before.

This narrative has been recycled ever since, assuring us that the collage techniques that shaped the language of dada, surrealism and all the other isms that made up modernism, as well as pop art and even today’s Photoshop-driven design, all emanated from that one original spark of paper-sticking cubist genius.

So thank heavens that the National Galleries of Scotland’s new exhibition, Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage, is here to set the record straight. A sprawling festival of collage, papier collé, découpage, photomontage, photocollage, cut and paste, scrap work, mosaic work — call it what you will — fills both floors of the gallery and effectively resets the chronology.

The above is the start of this article, to read the rest, click here.

I have been doing collage for a very long time.

Sixty plus years is a long time.

I love collage, and use it in various ways.

One is in junk mail collage.

Bluline: junk mail collage.

I use junk mail scraps & from newspaper and magazines.

With bits & pieces, usually torn, I play until I like it.

Golden: junk mail collage.

I love & use a lot of text, usually sideways or upside down.

Using it not to read, but as a design element.

Star: junk mail collage.

The above were assembled using various papers & glue stick.

Most of my student come in not liking glue stick, but

after leaning the technique, most become a convert. 

Have you tried collage? It's a fun addition to your art.

A smile for Saturday ...