Sentences on Collaging
Found objects and seized-upon impulses are at work when you are moved by the urge to compose a collage.
The collage aesthetic has many advocates. Shakespeare was a great bricoleur; he found readymade plots for a canvas, found objects like colorful sayings, spoken language full of verve and vitality, in the mouths of London. The found, seized, what comes to you in everyday life, discovered items, useful flavors, textures, haunting bits that are remembered, for the composition. As a writer, finding “poetic potentials of language” located by being somewhere and listening.
Some of Dylan’s song lyrics are collage-like compositions. “Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands” is a rhyming collage made of phrases which are verbal found objects with a refrain. “With your sheet-metal memory of Cannery Row, and your magazine husband who one day just had to go,” etc.[1] A recent writer called Dylan’s lyrics “more mosaic than Mosaic.” (Meaning that more compositions of imagistic fragments placed in an arrangement than in the moral framework of western civilization roots and rationale of Ten Commandments etc.) Charles Ives was an American composer with larger-grain collage sensibility. For more on this see All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and Musical Borrowing, by Gary Bachlund.
Found objects know no bounds. Their potentials are boundless—because imagination finds, chooses them, and expands them. “When the world as matter and turmoil takes its rest, the world as idea becomes manifest.” This statement is found in the ancient Chinese Book of Changes—the I Ching.
Found—discovered on the path. Free—offered by fate, free for the taking. Like the idea of “Order for free,” a term for the organizing of the cosmos by Stuart Kaufmann (“Kauffman contends that complexity itself triggers self-organization, or what he calls "order for free," that if enough different molecules pass a certain threshold of complexity, they begin to self-organize into a new entity—a living cell.”) the Physics of the cosmos gives opportunities of order for free, shapes that work, paths of least resistance, flowing Tao followings, cycles, strange attractors. The given sets up a field, a seed of reiterated similarities.
“We all know of instances of spontaneous order in nature—an oil droplet in water forms a sphere, snowflakes have a six-fold symmetry. What we are only now discovering, Kauffman says, is that the range of spontaneous order is enormously greater than we had supposed. Indeed, self-organization is a great undiscovered principle of nature. But how does this spontaneous order arise? Kauffman contends that complexity itself triggers self-organization, or what he calls "order for free," that if enough different molecules pass a certain threshold of complexity, they begin to self-organize into a new entity—a living cell.” In amazon review of At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-organization and Complexity.
There are “rules which free” enabling us to accomplish, there are traditions, patterns, disciplines. E.g. rhyme can provide a boundary, stimulating invention. Such patterns cause the mind to try out and provide alternative ways to make sense. Rhyming is an echoing allowing one to express deeply hidden feelings, thoughts, impulses. Consider the fertile inventiveness in country music lyrics, rap songs, etc. Found objects in collages can do that too—bring into the arena of creative process an opportunity to go beyond what at first might seem a limit
In the process of collage-making, I especially enjoy Taoist-style creativity—in which the found, the given, the discovered as-is is the center of organic growth, the impetus and architectural kernel for the composition—the whole—the sand-grain that develops into a pearl as found object in a collage is an image phrase seed for song writing.
People may wonder “What is the art that goes into a collage?” It may not be obvious is one has not paid attention to various collage artists over the years. Composing parts, arranging and relating components is an artistic endeavor. Exact placement, prizing happy accidents, trial and error, arriving at inter-systematized elements are part of the art proves. Choices are a made, and series of arrangements are tried, gluing without a mess, refining until satisfied.
A lot may be unknown when a viewer sees a collage. What is deliberate, and what is chance? What is art and what is luck, what determines the overall shapes, what is purpose, and what should I find impressive? How is the skill, originality, creativity in making with found objects?
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My collage is there to please you, puzzle you. Art is election for perception. One sees a lot, and one selects few bits—or they grab you I should say. From their inspiring suggestion, art arises.
Adventurous collages exploring with feelings of full freedom, a parade of surprising possibilities.
Each time you work on a project you have to enter into it. That cosm, that realm, that world—it’s logic, its configurations, its freedom and it’s inevitabilities, configurations and moods. Whether it be collage or song, novel, essay, or drawing—you enter with intuitive mind
In order to work it out. [“Art is the attention we pay to the wholeness of the world.” Guy Davenport. “True imagination makes up nothing; it is a way of seeing the world.”]
Collaging with found objects makes you alert to everyday life, the wrappers in the gutter, the label fluttering on the sidewalk, the details of ads like inadvertent words, colors, textures. Collage in individual found parts, and in the altogether composed collage is a process of discovering, trying, reaching the arrangement you want.
I can’t tell you what collage should be. I can just tell you what appeals to me.
Sometimes collage artists are Robin Hood—purloin a mass-produced image and incorporate and transform it to a whole new level and give it to hungry eyes.
Collage art is based on, or indebted to—the find. The find is the given, the heart-start, the donee—it stirs our interests with a surprise, recognition that startles. It suggests ideas, possibilities. The find when. I began might be a matchbook on a NYC sidewalk, a playing card, a torn newspaper, discarded memorabilia. Over the years it became various things. In India I found paper scraps from colorful political posters, primers, calendar art, and vivid labels. Walking to campus, and walking a dog, and strolling with a child in a snuggly in US cities, living in the mountain woods of Massachusetts, visiting places on vacations—I found great scraps of life wherever I went.
Think about it, something normally trashed, incinerated, buried, or left to the wind and rain to deal with has been cherished, saved, put to use, fulfilled beyond ordinary bounds. Not as a favor, but because of intrinsic worth envisioned and valued by an artistic soul.
Some may say it’s not creative, pasting already existing items on a surface—That’s not doing art like painting a canvas is. That it’s a short cut, unfair to other kinds of composing and making visual artworks, some may say. But collaging is also selecting, positioning, juxtaposing, composing. It can take as much time as is needed to resolve uncertainties in composing, and trying various possibles. It may also involve sorting out, neatening up, repairing, experimenting, comparing, highlighting, perfecting.
“ ‘Found objects’ means exactly what?” Found objects to be used in art means actual concrete physical items to be selected and deployed, and seen in fantasies, chosen by your unconscious to drive home an effect that sems to want, or cry out for expression.
“If it is ‘found,’ this scrap, doesn’t that make it random?” No. I pass thousands of things that could be picked up, but I reject them, as not what I’m looking for. It is by lucky chance that a resonant, attractive scrap is notices and plucked—chosen because it rings a bell.
“But it depends on chance, whatever happens to fall in your lap, right?” Maybe you think collagists pick up and use anything at random, without rhyme or reason. But finding is very fortuitous—synchronicity and lucky target focus find opportunities, opening up possibilities.
“But you’re taking, appropriated what you see? Maybe I wondered, “How is collage not just a rip-off, stealing an image, a piece of something made by others?” Collage typically re-purposes, modifies and places in a new context, juxtapositioning new relationships, making the found object, often cut, torn, recolored or otherwise changed into a larger composition, a new whole image transformed from bits and pieces into an entire new presentation. A collage composition represents a new viewpoint, a combination of features and artistic spins creating a new vision changing the elements into aspects of a newly envisioned (different from the separate found parts) situation to comprehend, to contemplate, a selection for perceptions.
You don’t chose the theme, the topic of collage art, right? You may ask, “How is a collage idea driven, since it’s based on found objects?” Themes, images that the collagist seizes upon are selected not randomly, but for their resonance, suggestive evocative power in his/her psyche, his/her interests, obsessions, accidental stumblings of discovery of odd societal effluvia in the wind, and hobbyhorses. From collected scraps, revevant (in theme, color, juxtaposition possibilities, pieces are chosen for possible combining. Selection and assemblage for perception means freedom among all the things seen, and found. And chosen, come into play. Finding original elements with intrinsic interest and the potential to work with other elements. They are put within a specific space, like a blank book 8”x11” or otherwise. The bits and pieces are tried out and after a process of trial and error improvisation. And thought. The way to place them in a collage is found. It emerges. Matisse made collages of cut paper, rather than found objects. So his dancing circle of ladies.
What’s the challenge of making collages? Collage is about composition—composing vivid evocative scraps into who le arrangements, making images, psychologically compelling and vibrantly aesthetically enchanting.
Taking debris from the ocean of discarded culture swirling in the waters and winds always, and magically combining them. Anomalies, “MOOP” (“matter out of place”), attractive details, samples of textures, lame hustles and cons of advertising, far-flung bits and pieces precisely placed, juxtaposed, debris from time periods and distant locales and realms, collapsed, dovetailed. The nonlinear aspect of collage. Sometimes chance determined places for things that go together. Mockery of the establishment, the pathetic conventional grotesque crude government ideas and crude commercial pipedreams. Jokes.
Lucky finds and happy accidents are part of re-inventing oneself, year after year. The eye trained to find things can do it unconsciously. I walk along a dirt road and glance at a length of rope or a wick entirely buried in the dirt, only a suggestion of what it is. I pick it up and transform it into two trees.
“Where do composition ideas come from?” Whole person, intuitions, experimenting, trial-and-error and capture. Intuition a sense of the gist, a hunch, a flash with a sense things, a strategy, a way to proceed, a clarity about a situation. “Wisdom flashes like lightning in the clouds of the inner sky; one has to foster the flash, and preserve the light.” (Kasturi translating SSB.) We use our inner light to gather found fragments and social debris. And to conjoin them into artworks.
Inspiration is like listening to a singer’s voice, invisible eternal or at least ever-available and vernal—an idea-sound, catch a wave, impulse vibe, idea image, that touches your consciousness. In short? It comes from who knows where.
Catching little glimmers that are potential dancing stars, finding bits. My work shows collages can be many kinds of compositions besides the few collage possibilities most people have in their idea of what the word “collage” means.
“What can collages do that other art forms can’t?” The use of unique scraps, found items, for uniquely expressive purposes—chance juxta-positioning of ready made elements—patches of color and texture, signs of the times, reflecting culture of the moment, indirect suggestion, mood, questions (“the gods love the indirect approach”—intuitive compositions of diverse bits and pieces of everyday life. An alluring discard not wasted but saved. Making use of discarded waste which bears the signs of energy and thought put into it, packaging, signs ads, decorative motifs used, put in garbage, retrieved.
“Tell me again: How and why are things found and decided when making a collage?” Their interesting, intriguing, attention-grabbing qualities, make them appealing and maybe unsettling, rousing curiosity, and satisfying with wonder, too. A thing catches our attention, causes us to mull it over, appreciate, giving a shock of pleasure at an enjoyable sight. Collage elements, such as colors, textures, shapes, edges in relation, juxtaposed combine together. Effects are harmonious, contrasting, suggestive, shocking, perturbing. They are entrancing, provocative.
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Making a collage every day for years and decades, you can contemplate the ritual aspects of the process. John Evans used a ruler to draw an ink frame around the edges of the blank page. He also put his trademark (“Ursuline duck” heads) somewhere in many collages. He placed a scrap, a found object content in the space, and often drew lines from it to other points on the page. Sometimes he colored in areas within the drawn section. He initialed his identifying signature. Going through these parts of the daily process was a kind of meditative practice, focusing, doing the artistic shaping, requires attention, trying out possibilities, a quiet contemplative repetition of actions. There are routines and variations of the process. No two the same, novelty keeps it interesting. Collecting little bits here and there may be a scattered spread-out bunch of moments.
Paper bits, cardboard, some items may not be paper thin, but cardboard thick, requiring carefull peeling off of layers. (In blank books thick components can cause the book to become wedge-shaped, and awkward to store. Repairing items, for example gluing torn paper, is meditative work, requiring planning the sequence of actions, placing glue exactly, hands pressing down for a time, experimenting and acquiring skill with scissors, preparing pieces to adhere. The meditative focus, the craft practices, are rich to experience, and they make a difference in the finished collage.
Neatness, exact placement for maximum effect, becomes more skillful and second nature in the process. Not sloppy, not random (unless random has arrived at the best possible configuration).
The collagist may have an extensive or a small stockpile of found objects. Inevitably at some point one contemplates all the human productivity—all the new model products, the printings of matchbooks, cards, etc, the junkyards and landfills of human-made discarded products. Human productivity—made from materials, distributed and used for a day or a lifetime, then outmoded, no longer in the spotlight, then relegated to waste, nonexistence. One thinks of the person looking at modern architecture saying, “I was thinking what kind of ruins these will be some day.” The Buddhist sense of constant change, anitya or anicca, and how all things decay, occurs to collagists.
Shakespeare’s plays, like all else, will be ash, earth itself ends, sun dies, new planetary events occurs. And yet a found object gets new life for a time. Shakespeare’s plays can be seen as a collage of language in iambic pentameter. Experiences collected and reflected, shaped, used.
Collage can be a work on incorporating into existence what you saw in your mind’s eye in a dream, or fantasy. A tiger and a hand giving a sense of inevitable power, seen in a dream, telling a story. Sometimes an introvert finds a bold proverb which allows the introvert to broach a subject he otherwise would be too shy to bring up in public. Finding a concrete piece maybe treated badly by time, torn or burnt or worn out, just a remnant of what it was, yet you turn the found into a transformed art doorway, a passage, a focal point evoking new images
My collages are made with found objects and mixed media. The collages have a lot of variety, as one would guess, because they reflect findings and composing which span 50 years of life. Sometimes I’m amazed that so many have survived all those years of travels, moving, living in weather like hurricanes, monsoons, etc. Collages can feature many Images so fundamental to psyche, found in daily life, and made into art, returning images and materials found in the world, life’s carnival, to the consciousness of ideas, My collages are mostly on the pages of blank books and art tablets. So they’re portable and protected like books in their covers, but not easy to show, the way a painting on a wall is. Traditionally, pieces of everyday life are featured in collages, like labels, and newspaper scraps. I feel that most people probably are not very familiar with collage traditions or art made of found objects.
I wish people knew the history of collages better. The great collagists should be better appreciated. Some may knew a famous collage of Picasso’s but not know the work of Kurt Schwitters, Man Ray, Romare Bearden, Joseph Cornell, Thornton Dial, Betye Saar, etc. The collagist John Evans was an artist I knew and was influenced by from the 1960s on.) I should write a manifesto about collages—I’ve jotted many notes reflecting on the creative process of making them, but have never wrote about them. They’re a sort of visual diary of a lifetime days going by fast, jam-packed with impressions, tasks, discoveries, fascinations, etc., (As an academic there I found there was often not enough extra time for doing things that were important to me, like making things with my hands, but I used spare moments.)
Collages are containers or reflectaphors, for contemplation: humor and irony, attractions and revulsions, glamor and grotesqueries. Sex and death, joy and sorrow, bafflement and order, history and fantasies.
I’m very much a writer, writing academic books on Indian culture, and also short stories and novels. Maybe I’m too much a writer. I like carving wood, sketching, and photography too.
After many years of study in graduate school, and public university teaching, and research and writing—all verbal intellectual activities—the feeling side of my psyche came out in music after I visited Ireland—singing and writing songs. Some of my ancestors were from Ireland.
But my collages also—though I think of them as expressing ideas— for the years of academic overwork –the collages were reflecting my feelings, sensations, moods. [E.g. the many faces wearing gas masks and other appurtenances for the head which I did for some years reflect the years when George W. Bush was in the White House conducting the Iraq war.]
I like the Depth Psychological thinking about making collages: Collage and bricolage [and assemblage]—which James Hillman calls “the science of the concrete” [suggesting actual real solid discrete material, what is, what is found] (and regrouping scraps, re-sorting an assortment of bits and pieces) results in bricolage, which gives “the feel of complexes, their…edges, and above all, how they fit into each other.” [James Hillman, Senex & Puer, uniform edition, vol 3 Putnam, Conn: Spring Publishing, 2005, p. 220.]
“A primary method for the crafting of fantasy is what the French call bricolage, pottering about with bits and pieces that are given.” Furthermore “the wound reduces one to an ‘occupational therapy,’ that is, making something of one’s complexes as they are.” “We recombine them into new fantasies by becoming a handy-man who can make-do with the limitations of his psychic complexity. Here the wound is a teacher to which one apprentices one’s puer ambition.” “it is forced into the concrete, for bricolage is the science of concrete.” [James Hillman, Senex & Puer, p. 220] Collage-making and other arts, with or without material found objects, can be a therapy, an experiential healing process, a sadhana (spiritual exercise). The constructive work with hands, the process grounded with fortuitous findings, the patching things up, making whole, making new, envisioning and crafting feelings, meanings, intuitions. Experimenting, unfolding in time, observing the Way revealing itself. Good practice for trying to cope with and learn from life and its many aspects.
C.G. Jung observed this about creative persons: “The artist’s relative lack of adaptation becomes his real advantage; for it enables him to keep aloof from the highways, the better to follow his own yearning and to find those things of which the others are deprived without noticing it. Thus as in the case of the single individual whose one-sided conscious attitude is corrected by unconscious reactions towards self-regulation, art also represents a process of mental self-regulation in the life of nations and epochs.” [C.G. Jung, Psychological Reflections, p. 184.]
Jung’s thoughts on how artists travel the byways, where others may not pass routinely, where uncommon novelties may be found. Words related to our wanderings and discoveries are telling:
“Stravaig, from Scots extravage, wandering free beyond limits, travage, extravagant, vagabonage, to daunder, dander, potter, try out,” as when a collagist arranges in trial-and error experiments, try and see what turns up, works best. Mosey about, stroll, meander and “follow your nose,” go ahead not knowing, explore without a determined agenda. An attitude like Whitman’s “loaf and invite your soul,” not too busy, not too occupied, but getting in touch with deeper feelings, finding fascinating out-of-the-way ideas, memories, resonances. (I have found many collage scraps while walking my dog, especially from 1980s to 2020.)
To conclude: “Found objects” to be used in art means actual concrete (any material, not cement) items to be seen in fantasies selected by your unconscious to drive home an effect that seems to want (or cry out for) expression. I’m a collagist. That means I grab stuff found along the way, and that things adhere to me—I’m a magnet for colors, shapes, textures to compose with. Things find me and I put them together inspired by the moment—the found materials and psyche’s feelings of pulsing creativity and impulsive time.
Thoreau said, “the pine cone belongs to him who can open it” (my paraphrase)—in other words, the squirrel who collects them, and is good at getting out the edible part. The art of collage belongs to him who finds the ingredients, and makes use of the values and possibilities inherent in them, cooking up intriguing dishes to feast our eyes on.
NOTE
[1] I notice that Dylan has experimented with welding found-objects made of iron into a gate, etc. Exhibition of his metal sculpture in England? Dylan created metal sculptures for family and friends for 30 years before exhibiting them at London’s Halcyon Gallery with the show “Mood Swings” in 2013. He also collects metal objects such as farm equipment utensils, antique fire arms, cogs, chains and axes, and welds them together, creating new sculptures. Dylan’s welded Iron archway as a portal to a casino in Maryland is an example. “Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow,” Dylan said in a statement. “They can be closed, but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways, there is no difference.”] https://news.artnet.com/art-world/bob-dylans-first-public-artwork-unveiled-maryland-638810