From the moment in 1908 when the young Picasso took a piece of brown card pasted with a ‘Magasins du Louvre’ label and converted it into a new kind of picture, collage became essential to the idea of the modern, leaving its mark on almost every art movement from Dada and Constructivism, via Surrealism, Pop and Situationism, to the digital techniques of today.
This, the first comprehensive survey of the collage technique, explores the theoretical implications and political messages behind the work of the past century, explaining how the process was intimately linked to other revolutions in art.
It covers the many off-shoots of collage, including assemblage, montage, photo-montage and décollage, as well as related practices such as détournement. Along the way it outlines a new vision of modern art springing from this most simple and democratic of techniques.