For my final piece for this unit I chose to submit 3 collages looking how beauty can be manipulated. I wanted the images that I submitted to be brightly coloured and stand out to the audience. To create these set of collages I combined a number of different mediums to form the final image. I used a studio to take some basic portraits of a model, I wanted the portraits to be plain because I knew I was later going to manipulate them within my collages. Once I was happy with the portraits, I printed them off and began to cut them out. I took my time rearranging the portraits until I was happy with the ones I wanted to use.

For the next stage I bought a few magazines and newspapers and started to cut out elements from the newspaper that I would consider using for my collage. The idea was to match other models faces to my own model I used in the studio. The idea behind the making these collages was to alter the perception of beauty. It was the idea of two objects of beauty not always having a beautiful outcome. After looking at a number of different collage artists I decided I wanted to experiment with the way I attached the elements of my collage together. I experimented with things such as; string, glue, staples and thread. I wanted to investigate how different materials would look when added to the collage. I originally chose a plain background for the images however I thought this looked bare.

I wanted the portraits to have a background that complemented my theme. In the end I decided I wanted flowers as the background. Flowers seemed like the right choice for the collage background because they acted both as a juxtaposition towards the manipulated portraits and as a metaphor for beauty. I got the flowers from various gardening magazines, I chose roses because roses are seen as an immediate sign of beauty. After placing the flowers behind my existing collages. I took my collages to a group critique session at university and my peers suggested I added a different colour background and maybe some text relating to my collage. I took these points on bored and added coloured background to all three of my collages. I chose feminine colours such as; pink, yellow and orange for the background as it relates to my theme of beauty.

The final stage of creating my collages was to add text as my colleges had suggested. I chose words that related to my theme and to each individual collage. I wanted words that signified different ideas of beauty throughout femininity. I used news paper cut outs to create the words on my collages. The reason I used letters from the newspaper is because the media is where women are often objectified the most, I chose The Sun newspaper as it is know for its ‘page three’ style articles. Overall the creation of my collages has been an enjoyable experience. Collage is a medium I do not have a lot of experience in so I wanted to push myself to try something different. I am happy with the end result however I feel I could have pushed myself more in terms of the final appearance of the collage.

Collage was first introduced by cuban artists in the 20th century. The cuban movement was introduced by painters such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. However early developments of collage can be seen throughout Chinese history around 200bc when the invention of paper came about. Collage wasn’t recognised as an art until the 20th century, but we can find evidence of collage during medieval times using materials such as gold leaf and metals. It can be argued that Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were the true inventors of the collage movement.

Both Picasso and Braque demonstrated collage techniques in there !9th century oil paintings. It can be argued the Braque was in fact the one to start the collage movement, by matching pieces of oak wall paper to his charcoal drawings. Soon after Braque’s experimentation Picasso began to experiment with the medium himself. Collage soon became a discipline that many artist experimented with. Artists such as Kurt Schwitters started playing around with using different materials to create collages. Schwitters became responsible for the invention of wood collage. Wood collage would involve the artists painting and adding different materials to wood, creating colourful and abstract pieces of art work. Collage artist Louise Nevelson to the medium further, finding scraps and gluing them to pieces to wood canvas she had created.

The collage medium was then taken over by the photomontage era. Collage really took off during the late 20th century with collage artists such as Richard Hamilton taking the art world by storm by creating collages such as ‘just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’ This famous collage by Hamilton featured a classic take on a 1950’s home completely made of collage. Hamilton created the collage by using magazine cut outs he found at the time. Collage is a medium that has been used throughout the years in many important and influential pieces of work. Collage was often used during the first and second world wars to send messages to civilians, persuading them to join the war effort. Collage has become such a big part of the art world, its celebrated throughout many cultures and is something I wanted to attempt for my final piece. Collage gives us the ability to manipulate images to send important messages to the audience.