Collage with a Message
Senior 1 · Fine Arts
Collage with a Message
Lesson 1 of 5
22 min
Before you read a word of this lesson, look at the page below for thirty seconds. It was made in Japan more than 900 years ago, and it is not one sheet of paper. Ask yourself three questions: What can I see? How was it put together? Why would someone go to that trouble?
The maker of that page did what every collage artist does: chose materials, cut or tore them, arranged them and stuck them down. Each piece was picked because of what it would add: a colour, a texture, an edge that suggests water or hills. The poem written on top is the message; the joined papers set its mood.
Definition
Collage (from the French coller, “to glue”): an artwork made by sticking pieces of material, such as paper, photographs, fabric, leaves or small found objects, onto a flat surface.
Example: a picture of Lake Kivu made from torn blue magazine pages, a strip of kitenge for a fishing boat and dried banana leaf for the hills.
Definition
Support: the surface a collage is built on, such as card, a cereal box, hardboard or strong paper.
Message: the idea, feeling or information an artwork is meant to pass on to the people who see it, for example “save water” or “our market is full of life”.
| When | Where and who | What was glued | What it said |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1100s | Japan: court calligraphers and paper-makers | dyed papers, cut and torn, with gold and silver | poems about seasons and love, with paper that sets the mood |
| 1800s | Europe and America: families | printed pictures, lace paper and photographs in albums and valentine cards | “remember me”, “be my friend” |
| 1912 | Paris: Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque | oilcloth, wallpaper printed to look like wood, newspaper | a painting can contain the real world itself |
| 1919–20 | Berlin: Hannah Höch | photographs cut from magazines (photomontage) | a sharp comment on the politics of her time |
| 1940s–50s | France: Henri Matisse | paper he painted himself, then cut into bold shapes | joy, rhythm, the sea and plants |
| 1960s–70s | New York: Romare Bearden | magazine photographs, coloured paper, paint | the everyday life and music of Black American communities |
| Today | Rwanda: craft workshops | dried banana leaves and bark in many natural shades | village life, animals, dancers, sold as pictures and cards |
The works of Picasso, Braque, Höch, Matisse and Bearden are still protected by copyright in many countries, so they are not shown here. You can describe them in words, as the table does: Picasso's Still Life with Chair Caning (1912) glued a piece of oilcloth printed with a chair-cane pattern onto an oval painting and framed it with real rope; Matisse's The Snail (1953) is a spiral of painted paper shapes nearly three metres wide.
Worked example
Reading a collage: Juan Gris, Breakfast (1914)
Step 1. What you see. A table seen from above and from the side at the same time, with a coffee pot, cups on saucers, a glass and a folded newspaper, against a strong blue-green wall. The objects are broken into flat, overlapping planes.
Step 2. How it is made. Gris glued real printed papers to the canvas: patterned wallpaper for the wall and table, and a scrap of newspaper. He then drew over them in crayon and painted the rest. Straight, cut edges make hard boundaries between the planes.
Step 3. What it means. The newspaper is a piece of the real day, the morning's news, pasted inside a painting. Gris even lets his own name appear in it. Many viewers feel the picture asks them a question: which parts are “art” and which are just paper from the kitchen table? One reading of its message is that ordinary, printed things can become part of a work of art.
A paragraph is read one word at a time. A collage is seen all at once, so it can make its point in a few seconds. It does this through four carriers working together (Figure 1).
The strongest tool of all is juxtaposition. Two pictures that mean little on their own can shock or amuse when they are placed side by side. A photograph of a tilapia means “fish”; a photograph of plastic bottles means “rubbish”. Glue the fish inside a bottle and the collage says: “Plastic in the lake traps the life in it.”
Definition
Juxtaposition: placing two different images, words or materials close together so that the viewer compares them and finds a new meaning.
Example: a smiling child's face cut from a magazine, placed next to a mosquito net and the words “Sleep safe tonight”.
<em>What do Henri Matisse's Collages Mean?</em> from Tate Kids (Tate, London). Watch how Matisse painted sheets of paper first and then “drew with scissors”, and listen for what his shapes and colours were meant to make people feel.
Tip
“Every scrap speaks.” Before you glue any piece, ask what it adds to the message. If the answer is “nothing”, leave it out. In an exam answer about a collage, always cover all three steps: what you see, how it is made, what it means.
Practice
Define collage in one sentence, and name the support in this example: pieces of kitenge glued onto the side of a cardboard box.
Which of these is a collage? (a) a pencil drawing that copies a newspaper page; (b) a picture made of torn newspaper glued onto card; (c) a photograph of a market. Give a reason.
A student glues a photograph of new school shoes next to a photograph of a pile of plastic bottles and writes “Whose future?” under them. Name the technique and explain the message.
A hand-washing poster shows two large green hands cut from banana leaves, a blue drop cut from a magazine, and the word “SABUNI” in big red letters. Name one example of each carrier: images, words, colour, arrangement.
Explain why a collage can pass on a message faster than a paragraph.
Make a picture bank: from old magazines and newspapers, cut out ten pictures and five words on one theme (water, farming, sport or family). Keep them in an envelope for Lesson 2.
1. A collage is an artwork made by sticking pieces of material onto a flat surface. The support is the cardboard box.
2. (b). Only (b) is built from pieces stuck onto a surface; (a) is a drawing and (c) is a photograph.
3. Juxtaposition. Putting new shoes (the future of a child) beside plastic waste asks whether the rubbish we make today is damaging the world that children will grow up in.
4. Images: the hands and the water drop. Words: SABUNI (“soap” in Kiswahili). Colour: green for health and nature, red for urgency, blue for water. Arrangement: the large hands dominate, so they are seen first; the word links them to the drop.
5. A collage is seen all at once: pictures, words, colour and arrangement work together in a few seconds, while a paragraph must be read word by word.
6. Practical. Check that every picture fits the theme and that the words are short enough to read from across a room.
Answer in your sketchbook, in two or three sentences each:
Sources and credits
