The Dawn of Collage!

       There are a few factors that must be present for collage to exist sustainably. First of all, there's got to be paper. Vellum can hold a lot of gold leaf and gems, but we'll consider that a type of assemblage, since collage is really about thin, layered sheets of plant fibre. Secondly, there's got to be a lot of paper lying around. It can't be too precious or no one could bear to chop it up. Finally, collage needs an elaborate system of visual sign-language that it can absorb and respond to. Just like any art, collage thrives in the cracks of complex social structures, especially the nooks and crannies of luxury and leisure, since it technically does destroy other resources in order to exist. 

One of the problems with tracing collage history back to its birth is that paper decays pretty quickly compared to other media. So I can't show you the Chinese collages that appeared around the same time as paper itself(~200BC). The oldest thing I've found is some really lovely 10th century Japanese chigiri-e

During the Heian period, Japanese manuscripts started to include chigiri-e, a torn-paper overlay method. The most famous example is are the heavily decorated manuscripts of the works of the 36 Immortals of Poetry. Here are some examples from the Nishi-Honganji collection: 

from the 1st volume of collected poems of Ōnakatomi no Yoshinobu (921–991), Artist Unknown

two pages of the collected poems of Minamoto no Shigeyuki (?-ACE 1000), Artist Unknown

a page from 1st volume of collected poems of Lady Ise (10th century), Artist Unknown

Eventually manuscript decoration moved towards painted scrolls, and chigiri-e became less common, but it is still practiced  today. 

Next week, we'll be jumping all the way to the Victorian era. While there are many cultures who meet my 3 collage criteria in the intervening period, the records are scattered or have decayed.  If I find anything I haven't found before I'll post about it here. 

Update: Found some Persian Court pages style from ~1500 where panels are mounted on a patterned "album page". Close 2 collage but not quite... I'll keep checking it out! 

See you @ the club!

Paige

Fruits of the Farr This Week

Hi All! Just thought I'd share some cool things I found at the FARR this week! Enjoy! 

Laureat Malois in Code of ethics for original printmaking (2000)

 

from Early Canadian Pottery , 1971

from Rachel Whiteread

maquette by S.J. Witkiewicz from 13th International Biennial of Tapestry, 1987

from Henri Matise: A Retrospective, 1951

I'll keep posting all the cool collage work I find! I've only gone through one shelf so far...