art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
, is the opposite of collage; instead of an image being built up of all or parts of existing images, it is created by cutting, tearing away or otherwise removing, pieces of an original image.See D-De , ArtLex Art Dictionary. Retrieved 2007-10-17. The French word "décollage" translates into English literally as "take-off" or "to become unglued" or "to become unstuck". Examples of décollage include etrécissements and cut-up technique. A similar technique is the ''lacerated poster'', a poster in which one has been placed over another or others, and the top poster or posters have been ripped, revealing to a greater or lesser degree the poster or posters underneath.
Practitioners of décollage
An important practitioner of décollage was
Wolf Vostell
Wolf Vostell (14 October 1932 – 3 April 1998) was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-coll/age are c ...
. Wolf Vostell noticed the word "décollage" in ''
Le Figaro
''Le Figaro'' () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The oldest national newspaper in France, ''Le Figaro'' is one of three French newspapers of reco ...
'' on 6 September 1954, where it was used to describe the simultaneous take-off and crash of an aeroplane. He appropriated the term to signify an aesthetic philosophy, applied also to the creation of live performances, Vostell’s working concept of décollage, was the Dé-coll/age and begun in 1954, is as a visual force that breaks down outworn values and replaces them with thinking as a function distanced from
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...
. He also called his
Happening
A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events.
History
Origins
Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happen ...
s Dé-coll/age-Happening.
The most celebrated artists of the décollage technique in France, especially of the lacerated poster, are
François Dufrene
Francois Dufrene (François Dufrêne) (born Paris, 21 September 1930; died Paris, 12 December 1982) was a French Nouveau réalisme, Nouveau realist visual artist, Lettrist and Ultra-Lettrist poet. He is primarily known as a pioneer in sound poetry ...
,
Jacques Villeglé
Jacques Villeglé, born Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé (27 March 1926 – 6 June 2022) was a French mixed-media artist and affichiste famous for his alphabet with symbolic letters and decollage with ripped or lacerated posters. He was a membe ...
,
Mimmo Rotella
Domenico "Mimmo" Rotella (Catanzaro, 7 October 1918 – Milan, 8 January 2006) was an Italian artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. Best known for his works of décollage and psychogeographics, made from torn advert ...
and
Raymond Hains
Raymond Hains (9 November 1926 – 28 October 2005) was a prominent French visual artist and a founder of the Nouveau réalisme movement. In 1960, he signed, along with Arman, François Dufrêne, Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Jacques Ville ...
. Raymond Hains used the lacerated poster as an artistic intervention that sought to critique the newly emerged advertising technique of large-scale advertisements. In effect his decollage destroys the
advertisement
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
, but leaves its remnants on view for the public to contemplate. Often these artists worked collaboratively and it was their intention to present their artworks in the city of Paris anonymously. These four artists were part of a larger group in the 1960s called
Nouveau Réalisme
Nouveau réalisme (French: new realism) refers to an artistic movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany and the painter Yves Klein during the first collective exposition in the Apollinaire gallery in Milan. Pierre Restany wrot ...
(New realism), Paris' answer to the American Pop Art movement. This was a mostly Paris-based group (which included
Yves Klein
Yves Klein (; 28 April 1928 – 6 June 1962) was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein w ...
,
Christo
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009), known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, were artists noted for their large-scale, site-specific art, site-specific environmental art, environmental art i ...
and
Burhan Dogancay
Burhan ( ar, برهان, ) is an Arabic male name, an epithet of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. It is especially popular in Turkey, as it respects Turkish vowel harmony and the end syllable "-han" can be interpreted as the Turkish variant of " K ...
and was created with the help of critic Pierre Restany), although Rotella was Italian and moved back to Italy shortly after the group was formed. Some early practitioners sought to extract the defaced poster from its original context and to take it into areas of poetry, photography, or painting.
Lacerated posters are also closely related to
Richard Genovese
Richard Misiano-Genovese (born 1947) is a collagist, photographer, painter, and theorist, and practitioner of transgressive art.
Misiano-Genovese is the surrealist initiator of the Altered Lithograph, Excavation Collage and Novel, plus Superimp ...
's practice of excavations. Contemporary artists employing similar décollage techniques are
Mark Bradford
Mark Bradford (born November 20, 1961) is an American visual artist. Born in Los Angeles, Bradford studied at the California Institute of the Arts. Recognized for his collaged painting works, which have been shown internationally, his practice al ...
, Michael Viviani and
Brian Dettmer
Brian Dettmer (born 1974) is an American contemporary artist. He is noted for his alteration of preexisting media—such as old books, maps, record albums, and cassette tapes—to create new, transformed works of visual fine art.
Life and art
...
, who employs a novel method of decollage by removing material from books, leaving behind select images and text to form sculptural collages. Also there is Fizz Fieldgrass, an English artist, who uses digitally enhanced photographic images, overlaid by duplication on either Japanese Conservation Grade or fine
Paper Mulberry
The paper mulberry (''Broussonetia papyrifera'', syn. ''Morus papyrifera'' L.) is a species of flowering plant in the family Moraceae. It is native to Asia,ESA
, owners =
, headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France
, coordinates =
, spaceport = Guiana Space Centre
, seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png
, seal_size = 130px
, image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...
indicates its use equivalent to "We have lift-off!" at a
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
launch center.
Déchirage
Déchirage (from the French, déchirer: 'to tear') is an artistic style that distresses paper to create a three-dimensional patchwork. It is a form of décollage, taking the original image apart physically through incision, parting and peeling away.
Romare Bearden
Romare Bearden (September 2, 1911 – March 12, 1988) was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City a ...
(b. 1911 – d. 1988) the African American collage artist used déchirage as an important element of his
abstract expressionist
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...
paintings. The first public display of "Photographic" Déchirage (the tearing of layers of digital photographs to create a distinctive three-dimensional image) was at the ''Art of Giving'' exhibition at the
Saatchi Gallery
The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art and an independent charity opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985. Exhibitions which drew upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, starting with US artists and minimalism, moving to the D ...
in 2010.
It can be argued that the depliage is a form of décollage, as it is made by initially removing the staples from a staple-bound
magazine
A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combinatio ...
.
Literature
* '' Phasen''. Jürgen Becker und Wolf Vostell, Galerie Der Spiegel, Köln 1960.
*''TPL'', François Dufrêne, Alain Jouffroy, Wolf Vostell, Verlag Der Kalender, Wuppertal 1961.
* ''Dufrene, Hains, Rotella, Villegle, Vostell'': Plakatabrisse aus der Sammlung Cremer,
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (, "State Gallery") is an art museum in Stuttgart, Germany, it opened in 1843. In 1984, the opening of the Neue Staatsgalerie (''New State Gallery'') designed by James Stirling transformed the once provincial gallery ...
, 1971
* ''Ulrich Krempel: Nouveau Réalisme. Revolution des Alltäglichen'',
Bernard Blistène
Bernard Blistène (born 1955) is a French art curator. From 2013 to 2021 he was the director of the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'Art moderne. Together with and Christine Macel, ArtReview ranked him the 21st in their annual ranking of the ...
Art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defin ...
*
Creativity techniques
Creativity techniques are methods that encourage creative actions, whether in the arts or sciences. They focus on a variety of aspects of creativity, including techniques for idea generation and divergent thinking, methods of re-framing problems, ...
*
Fluxus
Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
List of artistic media
Arts media is the material and tools used by an artist, composer or designer to create a work of art, for example, "pen and ink" where the pen is the tool and the ink is the material. Here is a list of types of art and the media used within those ...
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List of art movements
:''See Art periods for a chronological list.
This is a list of art movements in alphabetical order. These terms, helpful for curricula or anthologies, evolved over time to group artists who are often loosely related. Some of these movements wer ...
List of most expensive paintings
This is a list of the highest known prices paid for paintings. The current record price is approximately US$450.3 million (which includes commission), paid for Leonardo da Vinci's ''Salvator Mundi'' (). The painting was sold in November 2017, t ...
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List of most expensive sculptures
This is a list of the highest known prices paid for sculptures.
Most valuable sculpture
Alberto Giacometti's ''L'Homme au doigt'' was auctioned for $141.3m at Christie's in May 2015, the highest price for any sculpture at auction.
Giacometti's '' ...
*
List of sculptors
This is a list of sculptors – notable people known for three-dimensional artistic creations, which may include those who use sound and light. It is incomplete and you can help by expanding it.
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Organic décollage Organic décollage is a phrase used by the photographer Maria Stengard-Green to describe the naturally occurring or non-artistically organized décollage that echoes the work of Mimmo Rotella, Raymond Hains, Jacques Villeglé, Yves Klein and Robert ...