The Mixed Media Art Style of Collage

The inspiring thing about art is its many, and constantly evolving, subgenres. Whether you’re into realism, surrealism, sculpture, or even photography, the great thing about art is that there are no rules. Like music, art can blur the lines between genres and styles, creating new and interesting forms of art.

Seen in pioneering artists like Basquiat, who used symbols and hieroglyphics in a new way, or popular modern artists like Kehinde Wiley, who took renaissance era portraits and placed Black New Yorkers as the subjects, art is constantly evolving, meaning there’s room for anyone to make anything.

For this installment of Thet Art Appreciation, we’ll be focusing on the mixed media art form of collage. According to MOMA and Tate, collage derives from the French word “coller” which translates to “to glue,” and refers to the process of traditional collage. Using many different image sources such as print media, photography, paper, posters, and more, artists put them together to create a new composition. With its start in the early 1900s with artists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso during the cubism movement, collage realizes itself in many different subgenres.

Pablo Picasso, “Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper”, Soured from Tate

According to Rise Art, some of the different subgenres are papier collé, assemblages, décollage, and montage. Papier collé translates to “pasted paper” and is a paper pasting form of collage that incorporates hand-drawn elements. Assemblages are a surrealist form of collage that uses found objects in creating three-dimensional compositions, popularized during the Dada movement. Décollage translates to “unstick”, this process involves tearing away pasted posters to reveal images and words below. Montage is the process of assembling related images to create a new composition, usually as a form of social commentary.

But as Linda Martell says on Cowboy Carter, “genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?”

As a fan of collage myself, I love that it’s finding its way into many forms of media and spilling into the digital world. Artists have applied the technique of collage in their digital work creating edit videos, mixed media music moments, gifs, and even cinemographs.

This art style can be seen in a fun and interesting way through Tierra Whack’s “Shower Song” music video, directed by Alex Da Corte.

Below are some artists, that I’ve come to follow, who make captivating collage art in their own style from portraiture to animation.

@teetzworld — Analog Collage Portraiture

@labrynthofcollages — Stop Motion Collage

@rapruesign — Annotated Mixed Media

@gldeng6rl — Afro-Surrealism Mixed Media Collage

Artists like these are inspiring. Maybe they’re even inspiring you to try out the art form for yourself. If that’s a path you’re thinking of going down, but don’t know where to start, these two tutorials should get you started.

Analog Collage Tutorial (click to watch on YouTube)

Mixed Media Animation (Click to watch on YouTube)

Collage art is a fun and visually dynamic form of art that anyone can try out and master. You don’t have to be born with artistry in you to become a great artist, it’s all about repetition. The more art you make, the more creative work you put out, the better it will be. Creativity and artistry can be learned, developed, crafted, or whichever word you use to describe it. So, try out collage art, maybe you’ll like it, or even better, it’ll inspire you.

Sources used in this article:

Tate, MoMA, Rise Art