Review of Fragmentary Forms: A New History of Collage

It was during a panel discussion in 2017 that Linder Sterling, a prominent contemporary artist whose practice has long been invested in the use of collage, halted the discussion and said: “Well, glue is the stuff that we never talk about, isn’t it? We talk about images, but we don’t talk about glue. The sticky, messy, uncontrollable stuff that holds it all together.”1 The conversation, which until that point revolved around theoretical and philosophical questions concerning the use of found images in the service of collage, broke into an awkward silence. Linder continued, admitting that when making her collages she uses Pritt Stick, one of the most common brands of adhesive, largely associated with home, office or school supplies, and far from any specialized substance one would imagine an artist in the know would procure. As the discussion came to life again, a broader concern was raised regarding the absence of literature and theoretical debate on the subject of material culture in the discourse surrounding collage. A lack that is often attributed to the exceptionally varied, inconsistent, and specific nature of this practice, but equally signaling the discomfort generated by artworks whose material composition falls outside the parameters of formally recognized art media. Still today, collage terminology remains by and large the property of Surrealist language, whereby technical parameters are secondary to method, or even attitude. As one dictum goes, “si ce sont les plumes qui font le plumage, ce n’est pas la colle qui fait le collage.”2

In Fragmentary Forms: A New History of Collage, Freya Gowrley employs material culture as a prism to expand the range of creative practices considered under the umbrella category of collage. Shifting the spotlight previously directed at Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque as the so-called “inventors” of this art form around 1912, Gowrley devotes the lion share of her study to under recognized protagonists and pre-twentieth century subjects. The latter range from ancient traditions of decorative practices reliant on paper and glue, expressions of material religion, primarily Christian, encyclopedic projects of knowledge building, and other forms of relevant craft such as valentines, scrapbooks, shellwork, featherwork, and quilts, among other things. Considering the scope of the enterprise, this inevitably means that case studies are concise and often sporadic, leaving temporal and geographic gaps absent from the discussion, but also drawing new links across periods and places. The wealth of illustrations included in the book, and focused case studies dotted throughout its chapters are very welcome additions to the literature in the field. By contrast, two significant editorial decisions are commiserated. The first is the addition of enlarged excerpts from the text throughout the pages of the book in a magazine-like fashion. The second is the sweeping exclusion of footnotes from the book, offering a chapter-by-chapter bibliography as substitute. This omission will undoubtedly have an effect on the use value of the publication for future research purposes.

Gowrley’s expertise lies in Western practices from across the last four centuries, pertaining to what art historian Herta Wescher previously called “the forerunners” in her monumental 1968 book, Die Collage.3 But while Wescher condensed her discussion of “crafts, folk art, and amateur art from the middle ages to the end of the nineteenth century” in the space of a single chapter, Gowrley carefully unpacks this elaborate history of creative and artistic making, revealing the wealth of technical know-how and original thinking that remains largely marginalized from the canon of modern art history. Indeed, Wescher’s brief, and at times dismissive account of relevant practices from this period remained one of very few reference points on the subject until 2020, when Patrick Elliott’s survey exhibition Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage was staged at the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS). It was on that occasion that Gowrley would publish a portion of her findings on the subject in an essay titled “Collage before Modernism.”4

Two primary tasks are undertaken in Fragmentary Forms. The first, providing a much-needed comprehensive historical account of pre-twentieth-century collage history. The second, consists of revisiting the existing canon in the field, as well as certain recent developments, with the aim to expand not only the temporal, but also the geographic, social and gendered scope of this history. Inevitably, however, the shift of focus from the historical object identified by its protagonists under the name ‘collage’ towards a broader, non-linear trajectory of cut and paste or other assemblage practices, comes at a cost. As one group of objects enters the history of collage another is forced to make room for it. The significant role of collage in the work of artists in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries more broadly during the first decades of the twentieth century, to name just one example, is noticeably absent from this publication. Perhaps, this was a conscious decision in order to position the book in remove from Brandon Taylor’s 2004 Collage: The Making of Modern Art. Though the omission would seem odd considering the important role of so many women practitioners in this historical chapter, so compatible with Gowrley’s critical agenda.

Of the various hurdles met in writing such an expanded history of collage, it is inevitably the distinction between aims and means that is most significant. “The challenge to painting,” as the motivation for making collages was explained by Louis Aragon, underlining the idea that this practice emerged in the context of modern art as a form of resistance to conventional ways of artistic making. Opening the door to an entire new order of objects to enter the history of art, it is only in hindsight that one could consider the relevance of those numerous works and practitioners previously excluded from the art establishment. But, “while there are undeniable differences between the function and artistic interpretations” behind these two classes of objects, “with one functional and decorative [. . .] and one aspiring to the condition of high art,” Gowrley insists, “it would nevertheless be counterintuitive to tell this story as one of total disjuncture when the links between these two distinct modes of collage making are so clear.”5

Accounts concerning the importance of such crossover are common today, but harder to find among artists who engaged in collage during the 1910s and 20s. According to Brandon Taylor, it was nevertheless Picasso who once confessed that “I have always seen collage,” referring to cut-and-paste religious icons he recalled from his childhood in La Coruña and Malaga.6 Although far more important is the evidence at hand. One can consider, for example, the various practitioners who engaged with the traditional form of the silhouette, a practice related to collage, in their work. Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Sherrie Levine and Kara Walker, among others, addressed notions of identity as well as histories of exclusion in an efficient manner inherent to the technique itself and its users. Or, as Gowrley emphasizes, the long history of composite architectural structures—walls, tables, chests and screens—came to offer a significant tool for creatives to transform their accumulative assemblage or collecting practices into a spatial and bodily experience.7

The merit of Gowrley’s research does not lie in the book’s encyclopedic appearance, but in her ability to tease out certain qualities of collage that prove fundamental to it from her subject of expertise. The rich analysis of seventeenth through nineteenth-century material culture, specifically within Western, Christian contexts, deals with the sentimental, and even spiritual power of collectibles or found items, and the ability of collated documents to help one organize the world, create hierarchies within it, or indeed undermine these. To this end, Gowerly introduces the notion of “the saturated world” as employed by Beverly Gordon in her study of unofficial, creative modes of production among nineteenth-century American women.8 She explains the term as “a heightened aesthetic reality in which evocative domestic pursuits allowed for self-expression and emotional engagement” within a life that “was literally awash with print of all kinds.”9 It is a helpful term, which underlines much of what FragmentaryForms admits into the realms of an expanded category of collage. But it is also here, perhaps that a certain debatable, yet familiar refrain emerges, whereby modern subjects are understood to have been bombarded with images, documents, and information as an immediate effect of the Industrial Revolution. Considering the ever-increasing debate concerning this phenomenon, it is worth asking whether the nineteenth or early twentieth century individual was “literally awash with print of all kinds”? One could argue that with generally little signage and printed material visible on the streets, and newspapers serving as the primary source of printed matter, the turn of the twentieth century still saw paper as an attraction rather than waste. The point is worth retaining as the extended history of collage presented in Fragmentary Forms precisely points to the value, rarity, and inquisitive pursuit of practices that were often regarded as indifferent accumulation or hobby, acknowledging important links across this varied and complex field of activity.