In
visual art
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile ar ...
, mixed media describes
artwork
A work of art, artwork, art piece, piece of art or art object is an artistic creation of aesthetic value. Except for "work of art", which may be used of any work regarded as art in its widest sense, including works from literature ...
in which more than one
medium or material has been employed.
Assemblages, collages, and sculpture are three common examples of art using different
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 ...
. Materials used to create mixed media art include, but are not limited to,
paint
Paint is any pigmented liquid, liquefiable, or solid mastic composition that, after application to a substrate in a thin layer, converts to a solid film. It is most commonly used to protect, color, or provide texture. Paint can be made in many ...
,
cloth
Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...
,
paper
Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, Textile, rags, poaceae, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre e ...
,
wood
Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of ligni ...
and
found objects.
Mixed media art is distinguished from
multimedia art
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...
which combines visual art with non-visual elements, such as recorded sound, literature, drama, dance, motion graphics, music, or interactivity.
History of mixed media
The first modern artwork to be considered mixed media is
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is ...
's 1912
collage ''Still Life with Chair Caning'', which used paper, cloth, paint and rope to create a pseudo-3D effect. The influence of movements like
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
and
Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...
contributed to the mixed media's growth in popularity throughout the 20th century with artists like
Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, and sculptur ...
,
Joseph Cornell,
Jean Dubuffet, and
Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly (May 31, 1923 – December 27, 2015) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art ...
adopting it. This led to further innovations like
installations in the late 20th century. Mixed media continues to be a popular form for artists, with different forms like wet media and markings being explored.
Types of mixed media art
Mixed media art can be differentiated into distinct types,
some of which are:
Collage: This is an art form which involves combining different materials like ribbons, newspaper clippings, photographs etc. to create a new whole. While it was a sporadic practice in antiquity, it became a fundamental part of modern art in the early 20th century, due to the efforts of
Braque
Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1905, and the role he play ...
and Picasso.
Assemblage: This is a 3-dimensional variant of the collage with elements jutting in or out of a defined substrate, or an entirely 3-D arrangement of objects and/or sculptures.
Found object art: These are objects that are found and used by artists and incorporated into artworks because of their perceived artistic value. It was popularized by the conceptual artist
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
.
Altered books: This is a specific form where the artist will reuse a book by modifying/altering it physically for use in the work. This can involve physically cutting and pasting pages to change the contents of the book or using the materials of the book as contents for an art piece.
Wet and Dry Media: Wet media consists of materials such as paints and inks that use some sort of liquidity in their usage or composition. Dry materials (such as pencils, charcoal, and crayons) are lacking this inherent liquidity. Using wet and dry media in conjunction is considered mixed media for its combination of inherently differing media to create a finalized piece.
Expansion is a mixed media sculpture by
Paige Bradley which combined bronze and electricity. The Expansion sculpture is thought to be the first bronze sculpture to be illuminated from within.
Examples of mixed media artwork
''Still Life with Chair Caning'': Picasso's piece depicts what can be seen as a table with a cut lemon, a knife, a napkin and a newspaper among other discernible objects. It is elliptical (with speculation that the work itself could be depicting a
porthole) and uses a piece of rope to form its edge. Paper and cloth are used for the objects present on the table.
''Angel of Anarchy'':
Eileen Agar's 1937 sculpture is a modified bust of Joseph Bard, which was covered by paper and fur. When this was lost, she made a 1940 variation which shrouded and blinded the figure with feathers, beads and cloth creating an entirely different perspective on the sculpture.
[Windsor, Alan. ''British sculptors of the twentieth century''. Routledge, 2017.]
See also
*
Altered book
*
Artist trading cards
*
Collage
*
Décollage
''Décollage'', in art, 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.
*
Intermedia
*
List of mixed media artists
*
Modular art
*
Multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradi ...
*
New media art
*
Quilt art
*
Visual Focus Depth Art Visual focus depth art s a form of mixed media collage that places an emphasis on the use of three-dimensional application to individual creations of single one-of-a-kind art pieces to emphasize individual meaning in the work. It is a derivative of ...
References
{{Authority control
Visual arts media
Contemporary art
Painting