A s RA LIAN OlLAGE I T ;

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Within the context of high art' practice of the twentieth century, collage is considered by most art academi s as having originated with he Cubist eJp eriments of · ablo Picasso and Georges Braque qroun g, 1 91 2-1 3 ..

T~ese artists explored the possibilities of sticking found objects onto the " surfaces of their artworks with the funda . ·tal aim of achieving a t '

heighte · d .sense of tactile, visual and sensual 'reality'. ~ . . . . .

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Collage has existed in various forms as · · far back 'as the 12th century and

probqbly since the time of man's earliest creative e11deavours in the

' . areas of craft and folk art. As we approach the en.d of the twentieth century, collage practices anJ definitions have been broadened to embrace computer technology as well as 'grunge' art.

In fact, .collage is many things tO<fflany people. The word is used in ~ra, ce to refer to. he act qf sexual ,ntercourse, • amo1J9 ,other things,, probably because the word's origins lie in the French

·· word for glue (colle). To most, collage is simply a cutting, tearing and pasting procedure (though sexual intercourse ma be not much different to some!) ·

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One of the masters of tw~ntieth century t

collage, Max Ernst, made the following observation: 'If plumes make plumage, it.is not glue (colle) that makes collqge.'

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What Ernest meant w.as that stri~ing and meaningful .collage is more than a puerile art, whiah can only rise above the level of the banal if the artist imbues 'the collage with .insight aod .intelligence.

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... The finest collage art is revealing for numerous reasons, not the least of which being those extraordinary insights that cari be gained by ·the unlikely juxtapositions of objects and images to create previously unimagined perceptions into the 'realities' of b~ing.

.. , ,rw nri Matiss e, who took to collage in his old age like a fish to water, defined collage as 'drawing with scisso s'-a pleasant, but narrow ~efinition, by one of this century's finest decorative artists.

Collage has continued to evolve in high art practice both in Australia ~nd elsewhere, that evolution .gaining conspicuous momentum since the late sixtie . · Prior to gaining pop ularity with Australian artists in the late sixt1es and into the severities, coll<:Jge played a~ important role in most of the major modern art movements thf ghout the world-Constructivism, Cubism, Dada, Stmealism and · American Abst ract Expressionism. It took the emergence of international Pop Art and t lk opean Arte Povera to prod large numbers of Australian artists into exploring collage 'possibilitie~ in painting, drawin~, ,assemblage, video and soun~l

In my book~ 'Contemporary A'ustralian Collage and its Origins', Andrew Sayers, curator of Australian Drawi l}ngs at t~e National • Gallery of Australia, Canberra, contributed a chapter outlin ' g developments in A 'flstralian collage fr<;:>m the nineteenth century till the 1980s, citing · examples of work~ held in the collection of the National Gallery , as well 9,s collages frpm other sources.

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Sayers observed: 'The nineteenth century craft .1

ant~cedents oft e modern collage were as commonly practised in Australia .i s elsewhere .' He referred to a , photograph album attr~b\Jted to Viscountess Frances . J9celyn and trompe l'oeil paintings of arrangements ef· printed paper by C.H .T. Constantini. ·

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According to Sayers, it was not rtil the early 1930s 'j n Australia that cqllage became prevalent, beyond the fields of folk and craft art, w ~ n commercial and desJgn a tists realised its potential. Douglas Arnand and Gkoffrey Collings were

1two artists who experimented with

enthusiasm : Jhe brilliant George Finey (who claimed to have discovered collage before Picfasso!) made caricatures out of found objeds for f!>ublications such as the" Bulletin and in 1937 he exhibited humorous c..ollages at the David Jon-es' Art Gallery in Sydney, upsetting the profoundly conservative Sydney art scene in

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Robert Klippel, U~titled, 1956, 38 x 27 ems, paper collage on paper (represented b, Watters Gallery), photo Fenn Hinchcliffe ,

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a most provocative manner. Finey pursued his collage obsessions up to the time of his death at Katoomba Hospital in 1987.

Eric Wilson exploited collage in some of his Cubist style works, but it was probably Sidney Nolan who embraced collage with the most outstanding results, especially between the years 1938 and 1941, cutting up and reassembling steel engravings and gluing twigs and galah feathers to at least one of his collages (included in the recent touring Surrealism exhibition).

Another dominant Australian figure in the Surrealism exhibition was James Gleeson, who first attempted collage in 1939, but did not return to it with gusto until the second half of the 1970s, when he produced a vast body of extraordinary collage/mixed-media works on paper, one monumental series forming his homage to Max Ernst.

Gleeson said in an interview with me in 1986: 'I used to scour old bookshops searching for collage materials. I was doing them way back in the 1940s, but it wasn't till 1977 and my series 'Homage to Max Ernst' that I really became involved. I see collage as a form of drawing. It is one of the basic extensions of the language of twentieth century art, but the public and curators still think it's cheating. This attitude is simply the product of ignorance. When Bob Klippel and I were in London in 1947, we spent as much time in the natural history museums as the art galleries. We human beings cannot invent any specific new forms.'

While many Australian artists have explored collage possibilities sporadically (mainly since the 1960s), Robert Klippel has consistently worked with them since he commenced making collages in Sydney in 1952. Originally Klippel used collage as a way of developing ideas for three-dimensional works. There is an obvious connection between much collage practice and sculptural construction, where pieces are added and removed, until a satisfactory solution to the artist's problem has been found.

Klippel has a special room in his large, rambling, old waterfront house in Balmain which he refers to as 'the drawing room'-all puns intended. In this room can be viewed examples of his 'scatter' collages, where the tiny pieces of coloured paper have been moved into position with the aid of tweezers and a magnifying glass, as well as examples of collages composed of cut-up images of machine parts and very recent larger scale works, which Klippel attempted with considerable trepidation after completing dozens of monumental assemblages and fully satisfying his creative urges as one of Australia's foremost sculptors.

In interviews with Klippel which I conducted in 1986 and 1987, he said: 'I must have been pretty dumb, but I wasn't even aware of the term 'collage' when I started doing it in 1952. Looking back over this century I believe collage and assemblage are the most significant aspects of modern art. It is collage that has opened endless doors for me and helped me to fight that thing that is always trying to pull me back to safety.'

The Imitation Realists, Colin Lanceley, Ross Crothal and Mike Brown stunned the local art scene in 1962 with exhibitions of their mixed-media creations in Sydney and Melbourne. Both Lanceley and Brown have continued to incorporate collage in their art, but in conspicuously different ways. Lanceley' s refined paintings with collaged relief components are a far cry from his early confrontational groupings of pop culture trash. Brown's series, from 1987, exhibited under the title Hard, Fast and Deep: A Peepshow of Pornographic Filth, was a witty and bold attempt to recapture some of the refreshing anti-art and anti-social character of the original Imitation Realist days.

Elwyn Lynn's paintings and drawings since the late 1950s have been imbued with a collagist' s sensibility. Inspired by Kurt Schwitters and others, Lynn has produced work on paper, forming a kind of visual diary of travels and observations, while adhering to his ongoing faith in the virtues of modern abstraction.

Not long after Lynn began to stick items onto his work, Gareth Sansom started incorporating found objects to extend his expressive range. Sansom painted mostly on hardboard in the early 1960s, but by the 1980s was working lucidly and often dazzlingly, on paper with a far more frankly diaristic and self-referential approach to his art than Lynn. Photo collage elements of Sansom in drag and revealing naked flesh have been regular features in some of his strongest collage-based paintings and drawings.

I first began using collage (mostly photographic) in 1960 in a series of small works on paper which deployed images from the Chinese propaganda magazine 'China Reconstructs', to which my father subscribed. But it was not until early 1975 when I occupied the Sydney University Power Studio in Paris for almost the entire year, that collage returned to my art with a vengeance in an ongoing series of works on paper and canvas dealing with sexually transmitted diseases, the birth process, gender stereotyping and death.

Nancy Borlase, critic for the Sydney Morning Herald, observed in 1976: 'With the exception of Elwyn Lynn, there are few artists here who can extract such passion from the dustbins of life. These spongy metaphors for blemished flesh are chilling reminders of human vulnerability.'

Ronald Millar, critic for the Australian, writing about three concurrent exhibitions in Melbourne in 1978, by Gareth Sansom, John Wolseley and myself, concluded: 'And Arthur McIntyre at the Gerstman Gallery examines the fleshy destiny of human beings from womb to tomb. McIntyre goes back to origins, the embryo and the forming flesh, the dry, leathery skin of old bodies and the macabre contemplation of joyless anatomy. The range is narrow and all the stronger for this.'

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Since the second half of the eighties, my experiments with collage have endeav­oured to embrace all that is most uplift­ing as well as all that is most dispiriting in life as I perceive it. I see collage as the perfect medium for revealing the essential truths of being through both calculated and accidental juxtaposition­ing of shape, colour and image.

An artist with a collage mentality possesses a way of seeing, inspired by the underlying interconnectedness of all things, however superficially dissimilar they might appear. Collage, in many guises, is flourishing in Australia in the final decade of this century.

Arthur McIntyre

Contemporary Australian Collage and its Origins, was written by Arthur McIntyre and published by Craftsman House, 1990. Arthur McIntyre is a fulltime artist, formerly Sydney art critic for The Australian and The Age and a member of the International Association of Art Critics.

James Gleeson, Early on the Seventh Day, 1 97 6, 75 x 57 ems, photos, dried flowers, cloth, paper, paint on paper (represented by Watters Gallery, Sydney), photo Jill Crossley

James Gleeson, The Trigometric Station, 1976, 70 x 50 ems, photos, illustrations, acrylic on paper (represented by Watters Gallery, Sydney), photo Jill Crossley

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