Unit V – Collage

 

Unit V – Collage

Unit V – CollageIn this unit, you will be making a collage. I have some tips for you below: – Gather your materials before you start. The assignment requires a minimum of 5 visual items or source materials. Examples may include newspapers, magazines, advertisements, colored papers, your own drawings, photographs, etc. I recommend gathering a bit more than you need so you have options as you make your image.- This collage should be made by hand, as opposed to using a digital program to automatically cut and assemble it. Pic Collage (or other similar program) generated images are not acceptable.- Think abstractly! There is no reason this collage has to look hyper realistic. And the reality is, collages by nature are somewhat abstract. –  Your collage should use your source materials to create a new image that is more than a sum of its parts. Your image should have layered source material that has been cut, torn or altered beyond rectilinear forms to create new forms and meaning. There are four questions to be answered on the worksheet. I’m looking for 3-5 sentences for each question. Answer each thoroughly and descriptively. Please feel free to reach out with any questions you may have! Prof. Moore 

ART 1301, Art Appreciation I 1

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit V

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. Discuss two-dimensional artwork.
1.1 Describe the characteristics of collage.

2. Explain the characteristics of two-dimensional works of art.

2.1 Arrange a two-dimensional collage.

Course/Unit
Learning Outcomes

Learning Activity

1.1
Unit Lesson
Chapter 21
Unit V Project

2.1

Unit Lesson
Chapter 21
Video: The Art of Mary Fedden RA (Segment 4 of 7)
Unit V Project

Required Unit Resources

Chapter 21: The Modern World: 1800–1945

In order to access the following resource, click the link below.

APV Films (Producer). (2000). The art of Mary Fedden RA (Segment 4 of 7) [Video file]. Retrieved from

https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?auth=CAS&url=https://fod.infobase.com/PortalPl
aylists.aspx?wID=273866&xtid=188426&loid=568690

The transcript for this video can be found by clicking on “Transcript” in the gray bar at the top of the video in
the Films on Demand database.

UNIT V STUDY GUIDE

Collage

https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?auth=CAS&url=https://fod.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=273866&xtid=188426&loid=568690

ART 1301, Art Appreciation I 2

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE

Title

Unit Lesson

Creating New Meaning with Collage

According the textbook, collage comes from the French
term for “glue” and “is the practice of pasting shapes
cut from real-world sources such as magazines,
newspapers, wallpaper, and fabric into one surface”
(Getlein, 2020, p. 557). As you see in this poster, now,
instead of glue, Photoshop and other apps are used to
assemble images and texture to make 2D art and
design. If we were to dissect this poster, you can see it
was made using layers in Photoshop. For the
background layer, a photo of a pool is used. A filter
was most likely applied to the photo to knock down the
colors in the image. Then, in another layer, the logo
was added as well as text announcing the pool is
closing. On the bottom of the poster, you can see
another layer was added for the white box with text
describing why the pool was closing. Without these
added layers, it would just be a photo of a pool, but
with the added layers, it becomes a notice about a pool
closing.

This digital collage is more pleasant and not as
politically charged as collages of the past. Your
textbook mentions how paper collage was first used by
Picasso and George Braque to create a new visual
reality (Getlein, 2020). Before Picasso and Braque,
other artists used collage as well to create new realities

and meanings.

In Family Portrait by W. L. Germon in 1855, we can
see how multiple salted paper prints were cut and
collaged together to create this family portrait. There is
not much information on the artwork available, but we
can project that the family might have chosen to do
the collage, since in 1855, it took much longer to take
a photograph, so the children could have been
moving. The parents might have wanted to collage the
best images from the shoot together. Another reason
for the collage might have been because one of the
children had died, so this was a way to combine all the
children into one image. You can see how the artist
made a new meaning out of the work by collaging the
images together. Individually, they would have just
been portraits of people, but collaged together, it is a
portrait of a family.

(Germon, 1855)

ART 1301, Art Appreciation I 3

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Another example of collage from the 1850s is this valentine made by an
unknown artist. You can see how lace, paper prints of flowers, and people
are used to create the card. This can be compared to modern-day
scrapbooking. People often scrapbook to remember an event such as a
birth of a child or a family trip in a one- or two-page layout. Scrapbooking,
as in collage, is a way to incorporate many different paper elements, such
as tickets, photos, gum wrappers, and craft paper into one layout. Collage
also can be a form of entertainment and a source of joy. Like the
scrapbookers, the creator of the valentine might have had a lot of joy as
he or she made the valentine for their beloved.

Here is another example of
how collage can be used to
create new meaning and, in
the process, fool the public.
Aberdeen Portraits No. 1
was created by George
Washington Wilson in 1857.
Historical records note that
Wilson had spent
considerable time working on

photo negatives of the city’s elite. At the suggestion of his friend
George Walker, a bookseller, Wilson cut out and pasted a
selection of portrait heads in a tight oval, placing the largest and
most important figures at the center; then he re-photographed
the collage. Displayed in the window of Walker’s bookshop, the
completed photomontage attracted immediate attention.
Remarkably, some passersby did not realize that the photograph
was composed of separate portraits, and Wilson and Walker
received inquiries about when, where, and how so many people
were photographed. This can be compared to today how
portraits of elite families, such as the Kardashians, are often
composed of individual images taken separately of the family
members and then Photoshopped together later.

Jumping forward to the 19th century, we can see how collage is used in political movements, such as the
Dadaist movement. As described in your textbook, the Dadaist movement was formed in Switzerland in 1916.
The Dadaist movement was against many things, including the Nazi regime. On this Dadaist poster to the left,

you can see written “Dada est contre le futur, Dada est
mort, Dada est idiot, vive Dada!” (“Dada is against the
future, Dada is dead, Dada is idiotic, Long live Dada!”). The
bright red DADA text in the background with the black text
layered over it also helps make the words more charged
and unsetting to the eye.

To see one of the best examples of an anti-Nazi Dadist
poster, look up Adolf The Superman by John Heartfield. In
the work, Heartfield, collaged a portrait of Adolf Hitler with a
chest X-ray and inserted an esophagus and belly full of
gold. By combining these images together, Heartfield
created a politically charged poster that infuriated the Nazis.
Originally an AIZ Magazine cover, a German count printed
the work on a poster and had it hung all over Berlin.
Heartfield was subsequently beaten but was luckily able to
flee Germany to Prague. His work shows how collaging
images together can create new meaning and even evoke
emotion, including rage.

(Van Doesburg & Schwitters, 1922)

(Anonymous, n.d.)

(Wilson, 1857)

ART 1301, Art Appreciation I 4

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Collage can also be used to document as seen in
Day 322, Survey U, Sectors 15 and 16 by the United
States Geological Survey (USGS). According to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (n.d.), “Starting in 1966,
NASA launched a series of unmanned expeditions
called Surveyor that were intended to determine the
character of the lunar terrain prior to the manned
Apollo landings that began in 1969. During the
Surveyor Missions, detailed topographic images
(recorded by a tracking camera mounted to the lunar
probe) were beamed to television monitors at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The
images on the monitors were then photographed, and
the photographic prints were assembled into mosaics
by members of the USGS at JPL” (para. 1).You can
see how individually the images almost look like paint
chips, but when collaged together, you can see the
shadow and parts of the tracker camera and probe as
well as the surface of the moon. This can be
compared to modern panorama function found on cell
phone cameras.

For this unit’s assignment, you will make your own
collage. For inspiration, here are collages by Gino
Andres that were found on Flickr. Both collages were
made in 2011 using magazine clipping. In the first
collage, entitled, “Where does man fit in?”, you can
see how Andres created a surreal birdman by placing
a larger-than-life man with a bird’s head peeking
behind a tree in the woods. Gino creates visual
interest by placing the birdman in the line of sight of
figures in the lower right corner of the collage. It is
almost like the figures are observing the birdman and
wondering, “Where does man fit in?” This is an
approach you can use when creating your collage.
You can incorporate text and images and create and
new meaning or strengthen an existing message, in
this case, “Where does man fit in?”

In his
collage,
Friends, you
can see how
Andres cut
up images

to create new shapes and textures. You can see on the top how he
cut a photograph of a dessert landscape into a circle, so it now looks
like a planet. He also cut two figures out and placed the figures so
they are holding hands on what appears to be a sun. The sun looks
like he either colored the gradient or found it pre-existing. Keep that
in mind when you make your collage. It can be found material, but
you can also draw or paint in elements. For example, you may want
to cut out an image of a tree and then draw in a bird’s nest and other
wildlife.

(United States Geological Survey, 1967)

(Andres, 2011-a)

ART 1301, Art Appreciation I 5

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

You can be creative with your collage. Like the examples presented
in this lesson, you can make a collage meant to inform or educate,
like the pool closing poster. You could also create a collage that
incorporates your family photographs like in Family Portrait, or
maybe there is a holiday coming up, and you want to use this
opportunity to create something for someone else like in the
valentine example. You can be as crafty as you would like. Maybe
you have a special interest like a musical group or sports team and
would like to use this as an opportunity to create a work that
incorporates your hobby. Maybe you have a message or belief that
you want to get across like in the Dadaist example.

You can use whatever materials are available around you to create
your collage by hand, or you can also create your collage digitally
(like the poster about the pool closing), using PowerPoint or an
application you may already use. Remember, whatever you create,
you will be giving those materials new meaning.

References

Andres, G. (2011-a). Where does man fit in? [Collage]. Retrieved from

https://www.flickr.com/photos/spacedance/5913285791/in/album-72157627053209512/

Andres, G. (2011-b). Friends [Collage]. Retrieved from

https://www.flickr.com/photos/spacedance/5947717727/in/album-72157627053209512/

Anonymous. (n.d.). Valentine [Collage]. Retrieved from

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/711212?&searchField=All&ft=collage&offset=0&rpp
=20&pos=4

Germon, W. L. (1855). Family Portrait [Salted paper prints with applied media]. Retrieved from

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/263070?&searchField=All&ft=collage&offset=0&rpp
=20&ah

Getlein, M. (2020). Living with art (12th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

Metropolitan Museum of Art. (n.d.). Day 322, survey u, sectors 15 and 16. Retrieved from

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/266854

Van Doesburg, T., & Schwitters, K. (1922). Kleine dada soiree (small dada evening) [Print]. Retrieved from

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.154076.html

Wilson, G. W. (1857). Aberdeen portraits no. 1 [Photomontage]. Retrieved from

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/298968

United States Geological Survey. (1967). Day 322, survey U, sectors 15 and 16 [Collage]. Retrieved from

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/266854

(Andres, 2011-b)