Collage

In the impulse „A Walk in the Forest“ I encouraged you to collect and press leaves or flowers or other plant parts to use them for collages. And then, in the impulse “A personal herbarium” you already got to try a simple collage. Now I’d like to talk about the different techniques of collage, their possibilities and versatility. I want to introduce the concept.

Collage is a technique that originated in the visual arts. You apply several found pieces of paper onto a canvas or piece of paper to create a new image. The word itself comes from the French „coller“ meaning „to glue“, and „la colle“, which means “glue”, as the technique glues things onto a surface. The collage is of course not only relevant for the visual arts, but later also in literature and the performing arts. There are text collages, music collages, theater collages, film collages, or even text-image collages, as for example by the famous author Herta Müller.

We don’t know exactly when this technique was created, but it was certainly around the turn of the century, during Cubism. In the early 1930s, it came into focus with Georges Braque. He was the first artist famous for collages, but there have been many other artists. Across all artistic movements during the 20th century and until today, collage is something that’s interesting.

When it’s not paper scraps but three-dimensional objects that are glued onto a surface, it’s called an assemblage. You could do that with a natural object, for example, or with other objects that rise noticeably from the surface. You’ll come along this term quite often in the visual arts. You could say a piece of paper, or a leaf of a tree are also three-dimensional, but they’re so flat that you’re still talking about collage here. Artists like Robert Rauschenberg introduced assemblage into the visual arts.

You could also say that assembling objects, which are then three-dimensional but don’t end up on the canvas, could be called collage in a certain sense, but here we speak of objet trouvé. This term was coined by Marcel Duchamp. His work Bicycle Wheel, that is, the wheel of a bicycle and a stool put together, is a first example of how the concept of objet trouvé or ready-mades was introduced into sculpture. The objet trouvé, the found object. So objects that actually exist but that you deprive of their actual function. Well maybe not deprive, but rather the function is changed. The original function is taken away from the object. As a viewer, you have to look at things differently and realize that they also function as sculpture.

Working with collage requires a skill that we desperately need not only in the visual arts, but also in our daily lives, in living together. In the visual arts, it’s the most fundamental requirement: the ability to empathize. To empathize with what you can observe and with what you’re drawing. You can’t make a good collage if you lack empathy. Now you’d like to make a collage, but you might be unsure when you hear the word empathy. You’re in a new situation where empathy is difficult. So how do you do it?

By starting humbly with the leaf of a tree and simply saying, „I like this, it found me. I’ll pick it up from the ground or pluck it from the tree. I’ll press that and then glue it onto a sheet.“ Then the leaf somehow has caught your attention and has an appeal to you that you need to be aware of when you study it.

So then when you study this object of collage, first of all look at its edges. As you know the edges are very important for the human perception. The perception takes place at the edges. That’s where the emotion is. In every edge. So go into that edge, explore it with your eyes.

For empathy then, every little difference inside the object is just as important. What lines are there, are there dots, are there lighter and darker pats, are there areas, are there hollows? Is there something you didn’t notice before? Are there repetitions? Are there scattered elements that are related to each other if you look closely? All of these things are relevant.
For empathy, looking very closely is a basic requirement. You look at your object and then you think and you play around with your piece of paper. The drawing sheet itself serves as a format, as a basis, and ultimately becomes part of the picture. The collage shouldn’t look like an object glued onto something, an object that you want to show as such. No, the sheet and the objects play together and create a whole. It’s one work. It’s one work, in which the collage is, so to speak, on the same level as the rest of the interventions that happen.

When you think about it, the decision of which lines, which pencils, which structure you go in with, comes directly from looking at the object closely and empathizing with it. If you do this, you will succeed with every collage. Whether this collage is torn out of newspaper, whether it’s a photo that you like and from which you cut out a piece, whether it’s a text that you collage because you like the letters or the title.

With text collage you are the most in danger of being too caught up in the message of the text and thus constricting yourself. You need to be careful about that. But it can also be very rewarding. Collaging your own paper scraps is also very nice. You can use scraps where you’ve doodled, where you’ve worked, where you’ve wiped your brush, where you’ve tried something out, where you feel like it’s failed and you actually want to throw it away. These things are very, very suitable for collage. If you try this, feel free to try several different collages, not just one. It’s zippy and easy and quick, and it’s fun.

The thing is, that somehow a form comes out of the newsprint you selected or your own drawing or an old piece of painted work. The form is accidental because you tear or cut out the object and then put it down on the drawing sheet. Again, you scan the edges with your eyes. What does it need? What consequences are there? Don’t think complicated! Don’t think that collaging is an intellectual scientific matter but feel deeply into it and you will achieve very, very beautiful results.

This particular engagement with collages from nature, that is, with elements from nature, such as leaves, grasses, lichens, mosses or fruit seeds, with all sorts of things that you find in the forest, this engagement encourages you to look closely. To capture the small object that catches your attention very precisely. And this has not only to do with the fact that you see it, but also with grasping it emotionally. Now we’ve come full circle, back to the topic of empathy. You have to feel what you’re looking at. Feel it, and then a new form will develop, which is torn or cut or which you work on further because you’ve already found it that way. Something completely new, never before seen, develops there. Something that’s surprising and unexpected.

I’m sure you will succeed in this. It’s possible once you’re aware that looking is connected with feeling. And from this looking and feeling you can recognize what the steps for your work are.

Have a successful time with the collage!