Jamestown Arts Center

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CUT & PASTE: Collage Today

CUT & PASTE: Collage Today
JURIED EXHIBITION

Sam Gilliam, 30″ x 42″ mono print on arches 88.
produced by island press dan gualdoni master printer

Opening Reception: Thursday March 14, 2019 • 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Exhibition Dates: March 14 – April 20, 2019
Gallery Hours: Wed. – Sat. • 10:00 am – 2:00 pm 

Stemming from Cubism, collage as an art form first appeared in Picasso’s 1912 work, “Still Life with Chair Caning”. The layering of images and incorporation of autonomous elements continued to develop through George Braque’s artwork, becoming something new again with Hannah Hoch’s photomontage works of the 1920s and 30s.  Joseph Cornell’s post-war works developed the concept further by making it three-dimensional, a technique he used throughout his career and even carried into film. Beginning in the 1960s, Washington Color School artist, Sam Gilliam, assembles his collages to resemble his quilted and draped paintings, but on a smaller, more detailed scale. Artists such as Martha Rosler, continue to push the medium of collage. Her House Beautiful: Bringing Home the War, which was first created in 1967 and then again in 2008, creates photomontages that bring the horrors of war and political issues into American interior spaces, making the viewer remember the proximity of world events.  Collage enables artists to expand the boundaries of materials and question cultural norms and concepts of aesthetics.