Collage

We had a first class of image and we started seeing collage. A collage is a piece of image that has been created with two or more images that have been assembled, creating a new piece of work. A collage may include different materials such as news papers, magazine cuttings, photographs, clippings , found objects and glue in them together to create something new and different.

The word collage is a french word that comes from "coller" meaning glue that was coined by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in the beginning of the 20th century when collage became a distinctive part of modern art.

We did a series of collages in class, we had 15 minutes to create a collage out of news papers, and images from magazines. We had a list of collage themes which we all discussed and from there we had to chose one word out of the list and do a collage that represented that word. surrealism, composition, rhythm, contrast, editing, juxtaposition, texture, humour, narrative and repurposing where the ten word list. I chose the word surrealism because it was one out of all the words I knew the most.

The first collage that I did I think was not really good, I was very nervous and I was working a bit under pressure and I forgot about composition and page layout. I needed to leave more white space as well and it was not a very successful collage, but we did a critique of the first set of collages and they all told us we needed to make them less busy and leave a little bit of white space to make it more interesting. It also was not very clear and you could not see clearly the word that I had

This was the second collage that I created after having critiqued the first collage. I thought this one was a bit more successful because I planned it out a bit more, I decided to leave more white space which does make it more interesting. I tried to make it more simple than the first one and less busy and I think it is more interesting and it relates more to surrealism than the first one. I still do not think it was a great one but it was better than the first one, it sort of also has a bit of contrast and rhythm as well so it is not very clear but it is still better than the first one.

This was the last excersice that we did in the class, we had 15 minutes to produce as many collages as we could, we had to come out with a strategy to produce as many as possible in that time, I chose to make the collages out of images that I had already. The ones i produced at the end where not my favourite because I did them so quick I really did not have time to think them through and I do not think they are as successful as the other ones.