While talking of Art, what an artist reflects in his artwork, are his own thoughts, ideas and emotions as a reaction to his surroundings, any particular event or his clear or ambiguous thought process. Anything can appeal to his mind and he can reach out and identify with it. Collage is one of the creative processes of art-making for an artistic self-expression. It is a technique of comprising a work of art by pasting various materials, which may or may not be related with one another, as newspaper clippings, photographs- full, torn, or just a part, theater tickets, railway tickets, paints, colourful handmade paper and even an envelope, a letter or pages of a book. Collage became a distinctive section of Modern art in the early twentieth century when George Braque coined the term as ‘Papier Colle’. It was Braque who used pieces of oak-grain wallpaper with his charcoal drawings. Picasso took it to another level where he stuck oil cloth with a chair cane over his canvas. Kurt Schwitters explored wood collages and Richard Hamilt turned to Photomontage. Assemblage is a sculptural technique of organizing or composing into a unified whole a group of unrelated and often fragmentary or discarded objects.
In the online exhibition organized by Shankar Art Foundation, named ‘Artists’ Collage during Lockdown’, one can see myriad expressions by artists. One can see current scenario of chaos during Covid-19 with masked man; spread of the pandemic through newspaper headlines; an urban dream with bloom in nature; an artist’s diary reflecting the memories; holy places; loneliness with selfie-clicks and shifting realities where the elements caught by the mind’s eye are sifted through intellectual sieve.
Hope you enjoy looking at this aesthetic and artistic fusion of the sensuous and the intellectual.
Alka Chadha Harpalani, Bangalore
Artist/Writer
Acart2009@gmail.com
