Assemblage art, a form of three-dimensional art, began between 1911 and 1912 by artists such as Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Since then, artists have taken this idea, added their own twist to it and made their own type of art. I’m often not as as impressed with their creations as I am with their bravery of putting it out there and calling it art.
But, regardless of what we think of their art, there are many things that can be learned from studying the lives and art of famous assemblage artists.
I will be writing about some of the assemblage artists who’ve made history. Here are three , Kurt Schwitters, Jean Dubuffet, along with some highlights of their lives.
Kurt Schwitters (1887 – 1948) was an artist born in Hanover, Germany. He was an only child born to a middle class family and attended Dresden Academy of Art from 1909 to 1914. He spent a year and a half enlisted in the war (WW1), working as a technical draftsman in a factory. This influenced him to start creating abstract machines in his art to express his ideas about humanity. In his own words, “In the war [at the machine factory at Wülfen] I discovered my love for the wheel and realized that machines are abstractions of the human spirit.”
In the years following the war, Schwitters’ art reflected some of the depression and poverty around him as his work became darker and he started using found objects and trash he collected in the streets. He called his assemblages, “mertz.”
In the 1920’s, Schwitters and Jan Tschicholdring co-founded ‘neue Werbegestalter’ (circle of modern advertising designers).
According to Ackermann, “in 1923 Kurt Schwitters began publication of MERZ which brought forth constructivism in art. His work on the magazine allowed him to branch into the advertising and design business as well.”
Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) was born in Le Havre, France. He started painting in his late teens and studied painting at an art academy for 6 months before deciding that it was a waste of his time. After that he took over his father’s wine business while continuing to learn art on his own.
Dubuffet rebelled against traditional art and focused on creating low art, art that was more utilitarian and authenic. He was intrigued by the art created by children and asylum inmates and incorporated their crude style into his art.
According to Wikipedia:
Dubuffet’s art primarily features the resourceful exploitation of unorthodox materials. Many of Dubuffet’s works are painted in oil paint using an impasto thickened by materials such as sand, tar and straw, giving the work an unusually textured surface. Dubuffet was the first artist to use this type of thickened paste, called bitumen. Additionally, in his earlier paintings, Dubuffet dismissed the concept of perspective in favor of a more direct, two-dimensional presentation of space. Instead, Dubuffet created the illusion of perspective by crudely overlapping objects within the picture plane. This method most directly contributed to the cramped effect of his works.
From 1962 he produced a series of works in which he limited himself to the colours red, white, black, and blue. Towards the end of the 1960s he turned increasingly to sculpture, producing works in polystyrene which he then painted with vinyl paint. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Dubuffet)
Joseph Cornell- (1903 – 1972) was an extremely shy, American artist and is known as one of the founders of assemblage art. He is known for filling wood boxes filled with photographs and images cut out from magazines and objects that he collected. Cornell managed to make his mark in history in spite of the many obstacles and impediments that he faced.
His brother Robert was born with a severe case of cerebral palsy when Joseph was 6 years old. Joseph felt that it was his responsibility to take care of Robert and was strongly encouraged by their mother to do so. She made him feel that Robert’s needs were much more important than his own.
When Joseph was 11, his sister Elizabeth took painting classes from Edward Hopper, now famous as an American realist painter and printmaker but Joseph said “no” to taking the classes with her.
His dad died when Joseph was 13 years old, suddenly making him the male head of the house. Joseph felt that it was his duty to provide a paycheck to help support the family. He worked at a variety of jobs, selling blankets for 11 years and for a few months he sold refrigerators (a highly stressful job for him). In 1934, his mother found a job for him at a textile studio as a fabric designer. He was paid only $15 a week, a lot less than his previous job. His responsibilities consisted of doing things like researching designs and tracing patterns. He did not like this job but stuck with it for 6 years.
He attended Phillips Academy, from 1917 to 1921, at the suggestion of his late dad’s employer. It was a unhappy time for him. He was not used to being away from his family. He did poorly in school and suffered from a variety of disorders, prabably related to his mental distress.
He was mostly self taught. Since he didn’t know how to draw or paint, he did not consider himself an artist until he was introduced to the idea that one could create art by putting together preexisting images and objects. He was influenced by surrealism.
In 1931, after seeing La Femme 100 têtes by Max Ernst, a book filled with collages (also called a collage novel) Joseph was inspired to make his first pieces of art. Since he did not have his own room where he could make art, he’d sit at the dining room table after his mom and brother went to bed. He cut images out of old books and pasted them onto cardboard. When his mom asked him to put away his collection of books and other things, he’d take them out to the garage.
After that, he started putting objects in small round pill boxes. He made dozens of pieces of miniature art and it wasn’t until 1936 that he created the first shadow box art that he is best known for. His neighbor cut some boards for him and Cornell built a box and arranged some objects in it- a white pipe, a wineglass holding an egg, the head of a doll on a pedestal, some rounded blocks etc. Then he covered the front with glass. This became his passion and he would go on to create many more boxes before his death in December of 1972.
Sources:
“Joseph Cornell.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. . Encyclopedia.com. 26 Mar. 2018 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.
Wikipedia contributors. “Joseph Cornell.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 23 Mar. 2018. Web. 26 Mar. 2018.
Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell by Deborah Solomon