Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From the seminal 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 has been at the very heart of modern art, leaving its mark on almost every art movement since, from Dada and Constructivism, via Surrealism, Pop and Situationism, to the digital techniques of today.

This book, the first comprehensive survey of the technique, explores in full 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 practice. 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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (p. 7)
• 1 Inventing Collage (p. 11)
• Braque and Picasso
• Picasso, bricoleur
• The Collage Diaspora: Severini, Gris and beyond
• 2 Paths to Construction (p. 25)
• Paris: In the boulevard Raspail
• Sdvig and Za-um: Moscow and St Petersburg
• Constructivism: Rodchenko and Klutsis
• 3 Dada Dialectics (p. 37)
• Zurich Collage: Hans Arp
• Berlin: Towards the International Dada Fair
• Enter Kurt Schwitters
• The World of Hannah Hoch
• 4 Legacies of the Dada Mind (p. 51)
• Dada in Cologne: Ernst and Baargeld
• Max Ernst and Collage in Surrealist Paris
• Dada into Constructivism
• 5 The Surrealist Years (p. 67)
• The Tension between Matter and Text
• The Galerie Goemans Exhibition
• Joan Miro and Painting
• Surrealism in Prague: Toyen, Styrsky, Teige
• British Surrealism: Penrose, Nash, Agar
• 6 The Political and the Personal: the 1930s (p. 87)
• Large-scale Exhibitions
• 'The dialectical problems of form': John Heartfield
• The Private Archive
• Montage as Resistance: Hoch, Baumeister, Nash
• 7 New York Conversations (p. 103)
• Peggy Guggenheim and Robert Motherwell
• Clement Greenberg's Modernism
• Krasner/Pollock
• 8 California Collage (p. 119)
• Beginnings of Assemblage: Spohn and Berman
• The San Francisco Scene: Duncan, Jess, Hedrick and Herms
• 'Beat' Constructivism: Bruce Conner and Ed Kienholz
• 9 Later Surrealism (p. 131)
• Post-War Paris: Jacques Prevert and Co.
• Surrealism in the Independent Group: Paolozzi and Henderson
• The Non-Aristotelians: John McHale
• Collage into Sculpture: Paolozzi
• 10 The Critique of Cities (p. 145)
• Collage and decollage in Rome
• Decollage in Paris: Hains and Villegle
• The Mood in New York: Rauschenberg
• Paris: the later 1950s
• London: The Moment of 'Pop'
• 11 Collage in the Counter-culture: the 1960s (p. 165)
• Vernacular Glances: Paris, London and New York
• West Coast Endings: Conner, Herms and Hopper
• Jiri Kolar and the Prague School
• The Spirit of Play: Architectural Collage
• 12 Collage after Collage (p. 195)
• Late Flowerings
• Political Montage: the 1970s
• 'Post-modernist' Collage
• Digital Structure
• Notes (p. 214)
• Bibliography (p. 219)
• List of illustrations (p. 220)
• Index (p. 223)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

In this comprehensive new work, Taylor (history of art, Univ. of Southampton, U.K.), who has written on Russian art (Art and Literature Under the Bolsheviks) and contemporary art (Art Today), expertly chronicles the history of collage as an art form, beginning with a 1908 work by Picasso titled The Dream (not strictly a collage, but which used a found object "in a manner that was substantially new in art") and ending with digital and computer collage of the 21st century. He critically examines works by Picasso, Braque, Arp, Max Ernst, Mir?, Motherwell, Pollock, Raushenberg, and many other artists, placing collage in the context of an array of modern art movements-among them Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism-as well as its social, cultural, and political milieus. A masterful and lavishly illustrated landmark survey-the first to cover the history of collage in this much depth-this is highly recommended for all art collections.-Marcia Welsh, Dartmouth Coll., Hanover, NH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

If, as many cultural critics have pointed out, we live in a postmodern age; and if, as critics Rick Poynor states, the characteristics of this age include "fragmentation, impurity of form, depthlessness, indeterminancy, intertextuality, pluralism, eclecticism and a return to the vernacular"--in which "parody, pastiche, and the ironic recycling of earlier forms proliferate"--then it should raise little wonder that Taylor would revisit art activity since the turn of the 20th century, focusing on the role of collage, which displays all these characteristics. Throughout, Taylor discusses collage in both the narrow sense of technique and in the broader notion of conceptual approach to art-making and to life. This is a good book, well researched and well written, with interesting and valuable information and insights into this important aspect of modern art practice, and filled with many excellent reproductions of art works--some not previously available in print. However, this reviewer hesitates to articulate his irritation with the fact that, while constantly acknowledging the vital role of public entertainment and the mass media as materials and influence for Modernist artists throughout the 20th century, Taylor never seems to really deal with the impacts of these artists' works in the "low art" world of mass culture. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. W. S. Johnson Monroe Community College

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Brandon Taylor is Professor in the History of Art, University of Southampton