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History of Collage

This is where it gets tricky, alright, so bear with me, as this will be lengthy, and not fully comprehensive. I do encourage professional and/or educated opinions for any suggestion or revision, as online sources for collage history are lacking.

The most famous thought is that collage began in the year 1912, when Georges Braque, French painter and co-father of Cubism along with Pablo Picasso, specifically made the first papier collé (French for pasted paper). After having made it, he apparently felt “a great shock”, and so showed it to his friend, Picasso, who responded with an even greater shock, and then nearly a hundred papiers collés afterwards (Wolfe, 2023). It is safe to say it changed the direction of their art completely.

Papiers Collé

Georges Braque's Woman With Guitar, 1913 (left) and Pablo Picasso's Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper, 1913 (right).

But to say that this is where collage begins as an artform is, in reality, too simplistic. It reduces previous efforts in different cultures as mere exercises into collage and not a part of its history. We have to remember that collage is an artform of tearing paper and putting it back together—a method too simple to only be discovered by Braque or Picasso in 1912.

To truly appreciate collage, we first have to ask: when does a method become an artform? I ask this because as early as the invention of paper in China in 200 B.C., the method of “cut-and-paste” has been around. But is method enough? Does ripping paper apart and putting them together count as a collage, let alone as art?

Chigiri-e

An early example of chigiri-e, from the Sanju-rokunin Kashu (left) and a modern-day chigiri-e titled Crab on the Shore by artist Noriko Matsubara (right).

In the book Creative Collage Techniques by Leland and Williams (1994), the writers argue for a more definitive answer. Around the 10th century, Japanese calligraphers used the technique known as chigiri-e, a Japanese artform in which dyed paper, known as washi paper, is torn apart and pasted together to create watercolor-like images (Stanley-Baker, 2000). These images were often used to accompany and to write on their calligraphic poems. These can found in volumes like the Sanju Rokunin Kashu,—surviving historical evidence of the method truly becoming an artform in the 10th century.

Chigiri-e persists today, its method of hand-torn artwork still very much alive. Yet still, collage evolves.

Anne Wagner's Friendship Book

Pages from Anne Wagner's friendship book (1795-1834)

Eight centuries later around 1795-1834, a friendship book belonging to a particular Anne Wagner was to be filled up with mixed-media collages. Public Domain Review (2016) discusses this in much better words, but a friendship book is basically a predecessor of social media, where family and friends would contribute messages of love and encouragement—along with artworks and images for the book’s owner. For Anne Wagner, her friendship book had collages recording meaningful objects and memories for her, by the people she loved. Another example would be John Bingley Garland’s Blood Collages around the year 1850-1860. Though not a self-proclaimed artist, Garland was instead a politician and merchant. Though seemingly more modern than its peers, Garland's folio-sized marbled endpaper was a unique collection of his time: it contained multitudes of collages that he made, with the use of the iconography of Christ’s blood to fuel his work (Public Domain Review, 2022.)

John Garland's Blood Collages

Some of John Bingley Garland’s blood collages (1850-1860)

We will see collage march on from here, from Victorian scrapbooks, to dadaism, surrealism, Henri Matisse, pop art, and then the modern day collage. I feel there is much to discuss, yet I feel I can stop where I am. What I wanted to highlight was that collage did not come as a revelation from staple, iconic artists, though their contributions are unbelievably significant to collage's relevance today. Rather, collage came naturally—as a result of paper, and our everyday, common relationship with paper as a means of expressing ourselves. Though today we have moved past the boundary of paper, still collage reserves its place not just as an artform but as a means to discuss and dwell upon the different artforms and the human lives that exist around it.

I feel this is important to clarify as there is always a perception that art can only come from clear-cut artists: those who heed the call and seek the pursuit of art as a lifestyle. But I feel this takes away from what makes art so essential, and it’s that art is common.

It is that normal, human desire to express ourselves through artistic means, and you are not forbidden from it just because you do not do it as a career or a lifestyle. Art is for you, even if it means only tearing and gathering up paper. Art is not beyond you, nor above, nor below you. From the hands of poets, then artists, yet always in the hands of everyday people, we see throughout history how collage is a means of demonstrating how the people, places, and things we love relate to us on a blank canvas. It is a means of fondness and sincere keeping.

Perhaps it can be your means too.

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