Kurt Schwitters, Picture of Spatial Growth - Picture with two small dogs, 1920-39 (Oil paint, wood, paper, cardboard and china on board)
This is a type of mixed-media work known as 'Merz', a term Schwitters coined in 1919 to describe 'the combination for artistic purposes of all conceivable materials'. According to this principle, found objects contain the same aesthetic potential as tubes of paint. Schwitters started this assemblage of discarded rubbish and printed papers in Germany in 1920. Seventeen years later he brought it with him to Norway, having escaped from Nazi Germany. There he added Norwegian material: theatre tickets, recipts, newspaper cuttings, scraps of lace, and a box with two china dogs. The different layers of collage reflect the artist's journey into exile.
Focus on collage: combining everyday objects and materials became a new technique for twentieth-century artists.
More than a century ago, artists began to use cut-up newspapers and pieces of wallpaper in their compositions. This technique brought recognisable pieces of everyday life into artworks.
Artists such Man Ray and Joan Mirò expanded this technique into three dimensions. They were attracted by the potential of combining discarded objects to create new forms. Their work draws on the surrealist idea that unexpected combinations can have an unsettling power. This often relates to violence or sexuality but is sometimes humorous too.
Subsequent generations of artists have brought images and objects together in new ways. Some continue to use this approach to create moments of poetic surprise. For others, collage is a way to analyse the images in advertising and mass media that surround us.
