Collage and Digital Bricolage

October 8, 2013

This is another aside of sorts. 

At one time I was excited by the work of Robert Rauschenberg and was a big fan of the combine paintings and silkscreen paintings.  I was thinking about his later lithographs, of which there were many, and how they were essentially collages of photo images made into prints and were, to my mind, less interesting than the combine works.  Since I have been using more photo images in these digital collages and wondering about the efficacy of doing so,  I decided to try to imitate his style digitally. 

One of my other favorite collage artists was another American, William Dole, who made exquisite collages from snippets of text from old documents glued to watercolored grounds.  I also wondered if I would be able to imitate his work digitally.

Here then are two large Rauschenberg-ish collage/prints (22 X 32”) and two small Dole-ish collages (8.5 X 11”).  The Rauschenberg imitations were both made in an afternoon.  I first painted an underlay and then collaged photo images over top.  I did not bother to soften the edges of the photos or anything but just tried to integrate the photos into a workable composition.  I left these for a while as it was just an experiment but when I did finally print the first of these (Miss NASA), it printed beautifully.  The digital underpainting printed as if the entire image had been rendered in watercolor – the effect printed is quite striking.

Digital Collage #89 Miss NASA

Digital Collage #90 Orbit

Digital Collage #99 Love Feast

Digital Collage #103 Alexandria

The Dole-style collages took longer even though smaller because I had to find and snip out a lot of small bits of text from various sources.  I took a few liberties with the second of the two.