Assemblage (art)

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Johann Dieter Wassmann (Jeff Wassmann), Vorwarts! (Go Forward!), 1897 (2003). Vorwarts! (Go Forward!), 1897 F.jpg
Johann Dieter Wassmann (Jeff Wassmann), Vorwarts! (Go Forward!), 1897 (2003).

Assemblage is an artistic form or medium usually created on a defined substrate that consists of three-dimensional elements projecting out of or from the substrate. It is similar to collage, a two-dimensional medium. It is part of the visual arts and it typically uses found objects, but is not limited to these materials. [1] [2]

Contents

History

The origin of the art form dates to the cubist constructions of Pablo Picasso c. 1912–1914. [3] The origin of the word (in its artistic sense) can be traced back to the early 1950s, when Jean Dubuffet created a series of collages of butterfly wings, which he titled assemblages d'empreintes. However, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso and others had been working with found objects for many years prior to Dubuffet. Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin created his "counter-reliefs" in the mid 1910s. Alongside Tatlin, the earliest woman artist to try her hand at assemblage was Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, the Dada Baroness. In Paris in the 1920s Alexander Calder, Jose De Creeft, Picasso and others began making fully 3-dimensional works from metal scraps, found metal objects and wire. In the U.S., one of the earliest and most prolific assemblage artists was Louise Nevelson, who began creating her sculptures from found pieces of wood in the late 1930s.

In the 1950s and 60s assemblage started to become more widely known and used. Artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns started using scrappy materials and objects to make anti-aesthetic art sculptures, a big part of the ideas that make assemblage what it is. [4]

The painter Armando Reverón is one of the first to use this technique when using disposable materials such as bamboo, wires, or kraft paper. In the thirties he made a skeleton with wings of mucilage, adopting this style years before other artists. Later, Reverón made instruments and set pieces such as a telephone, a sofa, a sewing machine, a piano and even music books with their scores.

In 1961, the exhibition "The Art of Assemblage" was featured at the New York Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition showcased the work of early 20th-century European artists such as Braque, Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Picasso, and Kurt Schwitters alongside Americans Man Ray, Joseph Cornell, Robert Mallary and Robert Rauschenberg, and also included less well known American West Coast assemblage artists such as George Herms, Bruce Conner and Edward Kienholz. William C Seitz, the curator of the exhibition, described assemblages as being made up of preformed natural or manufactured materials, objects, or fragments not intended as art materials. [5] [6]

Artists primarily known for assemblage

See also

Related Research Articles

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to sculpture:

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Found object</span> Non-standard material used in work of art

A found object, or found art, is art created from undisguised, but often modified, items or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made, often because they already have a non-art function. Pablo Picasso first publicly utilized the idea when he pasted a printed image of chair caning onto his painting titled Still Life with Chair Caning (1912). Marcel Duchamp is thought to have perfected the concept several years later when he made a series of ready-mades, consisting of completely unaltered everyday objects selected by Duchamp and designated as art. The most famous example is Fountain (1917), a standard urinal purchased from a hardware store and displayed on a pedestal, resting on its back. In its strictest sense the term "ready-made" is applied exclusively to works produced by Marcel Duchamp, who borrowed the term from the clothing industry while living in New York, and especially to works dating from 1913 to 1921.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modern art</span> Artistic period from the 1860s–1970s

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Postmodern art</span> Art movement

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Nevelson</span> American sculptor (1899–1988)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Kienholz</span> American artist (1927 - 1994)

Edward Ralph Kienholz was an American installation artist and assemblage sculptor whose work was highly critical of aspects of modern life. From 1972 onwards, he assembled much of his artwork in close collaboration with his artistic partner and fifth wife, Nancy Reddin Kienholz. Throughout much of their career, the work of the Kienholzes was more appreciated in Europe than in their native United States, though American museums have featured their art more prominently since the 1990s.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collage</span> Technique of art production using assemblage of different forms

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Modern sculpture is generally considered to have begun with the work of Auguste Rodin, who is seen as the progenitor of modern sculpture. While Rodin did not set out to rebel against the past, he created a new way of building his works. He "dissolved the hard outline of contemporary Neo-Greek academicism, and thereby created a vital synthesis of opacity and transparency, volume and void". Along with a few other artists in the late 19th century who experimented with new artistic visions in sculpture like Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin, Rodin invented a radical new approach in the creation of sculpture. Modern sculpture, along with all modern art, "arose as part of Western society's attempt to come to terms with the urban, industrial and secular society that emerged during the nineteenth century".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Herms</span> American artist

George Herms is an American artist best known for creating assemblages out of discarded, often rusty, dirty or broken every-day objects, and juxtaposing those objects so as to infuse them with poetry, humor and meaning. He is also known for his works on paper, including works with ink, collage, drawing, paint and poetry. The prolific Herms has also created theater pieces, about which he has said, "I treat it as a Joseph Cornell box big enough that you can walk around in. It's just a continuation of my sculpture, one year at a time." Legendary curator Walter Hopps, who met Herms in 1956, "placed Herms on a dazzling continuum of assemblage artists that includes Pablo Picasso, Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp, and Joseph Cornell, as well as California luminaries Wallace Berman and Edward Kienholz." Often called a member of the West Coast Beat movement, Herms said that Wallace Berman taught him that "any object, even a mundane cast-off, could be of great interest if contextualized properly." "That’s my whole thing," Herms says. "I turn shit into gold. I just really want to see something I've never seen before." George Herms lives and works in Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coleen Sterritt</span> American sculptor

Coleen Sterritt is an American sculptor known for abstracted, hybrid works made from a myriad of everyday objects and materials, combined in unexpected ways. Writers root her work in the tradition of post-minimalists Jackie Winsor, Eva Hesse and Nancy Graves, and assemblage artists such as Louise Nevelson, Robert Rauschenberg and Marisa Merz; she is sometimes associated with contemporaries Jessica Stockholder, Nancy Rubins, and Tony Cragg. Sculpture critic Kay Whitney suggests Sterritt's work "expands and reinterprets three of the most important artistic inventions of the 20th Century—collage, abstraction and the readymade"— in play with the traditions of Arte Povera bricolage and Surrealist psychological displacement. Curator Andi Campognone considers Sterritt one of the most influential post-1970s artists in establishing "the Los Angeles aesthetic" in contemporary sculpture, while others identify her as an inspiration for later West Coast artists creating hand-made, free-standing sculpture counter to trends toward interventions, public art and environmental works. Constance Mallinson writes that Sterritt's work "walks a line between charm and threat, the natural, the industrial and the hand fabricated, rejecting easy associations for complex reads." Los Angeles Times critic David Pagel calls it smart, funky and "subtly rebellious" in its refashioning of discarded material, dumpster finds, and art-historical lineages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lubo Kristek</span> Czech-German sculptor, painter and performance artist

Lubo Kristek is a sculptor, painter and performance artist of Czech origin, who lived in West Germany from 1968 until the 1990s. He specializes in critical assemblages and happenings, in which he incorporates multiple forms of media. He created sculptures for public space. He is the author of a three-state sculptural pilgrims' way. During his more than half-century long work in the field of performance art, he formulated his theory of "holographic perception".

References

  1. Walker, John. (1992) "Assemblage Art". Glossary of Art, Architecture & Design since 1945, 3rd. ed. Retrieved February 7, 2012.
  2. About.com art history Archived 2011-09-27 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved March 30, 2011
  3. "The Collection | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art.
  4. Tate. "Assemblage – Art Term". Tate. Retrieved 2019-03-21.
  5. William C. Seitz, The Art of Assemblage, Doubleday (1962)
  6. "The Art of Assemblage" (PDF). Museum of Modern Art . Retrieved 2018-05-27.
  7. Deborah Solomon, Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1997).
  8. Kienholz: 11 + 11 Tableaux, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, n.d.
  9. Půtová, Barbora (2018). Chapters "Meeting Place – Introduction" Archived 2018-02-08 at the Wayback Machine , "Lubo Kristek: The Sun King in the Theatre of His Own World" and "Requiem for Mobile Telephones". Kristek Thaya Glyptotheque. Research Institute of Communication in Art. ISBN   978-80-905548-3-2. Retrieved February 7, 2018.
  10. "A Finding Aid to the Janice Lowry papers, 1957-2009". www.aaa.si.edu.
  11. Galerie Gambit Pamphlet, Drury, Richard. (2000)
  12. Biographical Note, The Louise Nevelson Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
  13. Wieland Schmied and Daniel Spoerri, Daniel Spoerri: Coincidence as Master = Le Hasard comme maître = Der Zufall als Meister = Il caso come maestro, Bielefeld, Germany, 2003 at p. 10.
  14. Crawford, Ashley. "Hoax most perfect," Melbourne Age, October 11, 2003.
  15. "Frontpage".

Further reading