Tuesday, July 12, 2011

The Beginnings Of Mixed Media Art

By Clara Berta


Everything we know today as mixed media art started in the early twentieth century, when artists in search of an alternative to what they saw as hidebound academicism started including objects as well as images that were not regarded as art elements in their works. Samples of daily materials being a part of ceremonial or aesthetic objects can be found dating back to prehistory, but these were made with different motives, and provided a very different social purpose than the items known as "art."

In 1912, Picasso included a piece of chair caning into 1 of his works. While this act seems tame nowadays, it was quite radical at that time, when the idea of art needed a removal from the everyday world. By linking the partition between paint and reality, Picasso helped to bring on a time of revolutionary change in art, when rules were thrown out and materials of all kinds began to be seen as capable of becoming art. Five years later, in the year 1917, Marcel Duchamp displayed a urinal in an art show. Regardless of whether he was attempting to make the point that everything is art, or that nothing is art, has been the topic of debate ever since. Duchamp's uncovering of the "readymade," as he named the urinal as well as other things that he chose, removed the line between art and life even more completely than Picasso had accomplished.

In the 1920s, people of the Dada movement incorporated newspapers, detritus off the street, as well as pieces of wood, dressmakers' dummies and many other things in their artwork. Although Dada was a self-proclaimed anti-art movement, their continuation of Picasso's and Duchamp's usage of "non-art" objects within an artistic context served to encourage the development of mixed-media art, inducing the continuation, rather than the destruction, of art.

In the 1950s, Arman became very flourishing as an artist primarily by assembling large numbers of things in a single place. His signature style was a collection of items like wrenches, cutlery or shoes contained within a plexiglass box. Many have viewed his art as either a condemnation or a celebration of mass usage, the real beauty of it being that it could be either. In the 60's, Jean Tinguely created sculptures from pieces of steel and various metals, found things as well as gears. The unique characteristic of Tinguely's masterpieces was that they're animated and self-destroying. When Tinguely had finished a work, he'd organize a performance to which numerous individuals would come and see his chaotic creations break themselves into oblivion.

Mixed media art is any type of art that combines two or more mediums in a single work. Assemblages and collages are generally varieties of mixed media that are popular in the 21st century. The mixture of painting media such as oil, acrylic and watercolour in a single work has become a popular practice among painters. The mixture of various drawing media, along with the combination of drawing with media like painting, is another common form of mixed media art. The mixture of printmaking methods, such as lithography and woodcuts, carries a long history, and advancements in technology have motivated printmakers to experiment with mixing conventional methods with digital printing and photography.




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