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Art historians will tell you that
"real" collage as a fine art began
around the beginning of the last
century, when Picasso and Braque
pasted some papers onto their
paintings. It is assumed that
what people did with cut paper and
cut-outs of pictures before then
belongs entirely in
the realm of amateur folk crafts, and
cannot be classified as art. However, people around the world have
been creating
beautiful work with paper and cutting
devices for centuries.
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| One of my favorites is
the eighteenth century
Englishwoman Mrs. Mary
Delany
(1700-1788). Beginning at
age 72 and continuing
for ten years until
her eyesight began to
fail, she created
almost 1,000 botanical
illustrations from cut
paper. Her pictures
were made with
incredibly intricate
detail. She would cut
out with exact
precision each tiny
detail of a
plant–individual
stamens, bits of
pollen, cactus
spines... She called
her works "Paper
Mosaicks," and that is
partly why I like to
use the term paper
mosaic collage for my
own pictures. |
British Museum |
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mid 19th C. collage by Hans
Christian Andersen
H. C. Andersens Hus, Odense |
A lot of people don't realize that Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), in
addition to writing fairy tales, also liked
to make paper cut-outs, silhouettes, and
collages. Some of them look surprisingly modern. |
| Today the collage
aesthetic is everywhere in art, music, and
commerce, much of it driven by computer
technology. As far as art goes, I
confess to a bias toward traditional cutting
and pasting. I love the tactile
qualities of work created from different
papers and objects combined together. My own pictures are quite textural. People
have even felt compelled to pet them!
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