Calm Week

With a wide range of projects and over 160 photographs of examples of professional work, from collage art for walls to collage-decorated screens and boxes, this exciting book features detailed stage-by-stage instructions for the collage enthusiast. Expertly written and easy to use,The Art and Craft of Collage will encourage and inform anyone with an interest in producing original collage creations.

Collage has a relatively short, but incredibly rich history. The popularity of collage is on the increase again, partly as a result of such postmodernist concerns as pluralism, multiplicity and hybridity. This book features works by international artists Picasso, Schwitters and Ernst, through to Hannah Hoch, Martha Rosler, John Stezaker, Richard Hamilton, Layla Curtis, David Salle, Eduardo Poalozzi, Javier Rodriguez, Robert Rauschenberg, Mimei Thompson, David Thorpe, Fred Tomaselli and many more.

Emphasizing the diversity of twentieth-century collage practices, Rona Cran's book explores the role that it played in the work of Joseph Cornell, William Burroughs, Frank O'Hara, and Bob Dylan. For all four, collage was an important creative catalyst, employed cathartically, aggressively, and experimentally. Collage's catalytic effect, Cran argues, enabled each to overcome a potentially destabilizing crisis in representation. Cornell, convinced that he was an artist and yet hampered by his inability to draw or paint, used collage to gain access to the art world and to show what he was capable of given the right medium. Burroughs' formal problems with linear composition were turned to his advantage by collage, which enabled him to move beyond narrative and chronological requirement. O'Hara used collage to navigate an effective path between plastic art and literature, and to choose the facets of each which best suited his compositional style. Bob Dylan's self-conscious application of collage techniques elevated his brand of rock-and-roll to a level of heightened aestheticism. Throughout her book, Cran shows that to delineate collage stringently as one thing or another is to severely limit our understanding of the work of the artists and writers who came to use it in non-traditional ways.

A survey of the use of collage in the visual arts from the early-20th-century innovations of Picasso to the present day. Collage is defined broadly, and the book covers montage, photomontage and assemblage as associated disciplines. The geographical scope is inclusive, and there is discussion of work from Central and Eastern Europe. There is a good balance of better and lesser known artists, and the book contains a lot of material rarely reproduced.

The technique of collage has been incredibly influential in 20th-century art. This publication examines the ways in which the potential of collage has been exploited by a broad range of artists, and looks in particular at the work of Peter Blake. One of Britain's most popular artists, Blake is also an avid collector, and has curated the show at Tare Liverpool that this publication celebrates. He has sifted carefully both through the works at the Tare and through his own fascinating collection to reveal the dispersal of collage in very surprising directions.Peter Blake: About Collage opens with an interview in which the artist discusses his own use of the technique, his influences, and his many collaborations with musicians, writers and performers. An essay by Dawn Ades explores the history and significance of collage from the early 20th century through to the present day, and investigates the impact of collage in the work of artists ranging from Kurt Schwitters to Joseph Cornell and Tracey Emin.