famed collage artists include pablo picasso, man ray, and kurt schwitters

Digital collage is the technique of using computer tools in collage creation to encourage chance associations of disparate visual elements and the subsequent transformation of the visual results through the use of electronic media. It is commonly used in the creation of digital art.
The wood collage is a type that emerged somewhat later than paper collage. Kurt Schwitters began experimenting with wood collages in the 1920s after already having given up painting for paper collages. [10] The principle of wood collage is clearly established at least as early as his ‘Merz Picture with Candle’, dating from the mid to late 1920s.

In the 1950s and 60s assemblage started to become more widely known and used. Artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns started using scrappy materials and objects to make anti-aesthetic art sculptures, a big part of the ideas that make assemblage what it is. [4]
The painter Armando Reverón is one of the first to use this technique when using disposable materials such as bamboo, wires, or kraft paper. In the thirties he made a skeleton with wings of mucilage, adopting this style years before other artists. Later, Reverón made instruments and set pieces such as a telephone, a sofa, a sewing machine, a piano and even music books with their scores.

5. Eileen Agar
British artist Eileen Agar was one of the only female members admitted into the Surrealist group on her own artistic terms, and not simply as a model or a muse. Like Höch’s, Agar’s works are social critiques and show humour and irony. In ‘Precious Stones’, she superimposes a classical cut-out profile over a catalogue page showing antique jewellery.
8. John Stezaker
British artist John Stezaker studied at the Slade School of Art in 1973, and went on to produce work which challenged the predominance of Pop art. Stezaker’s collages are irreverent; his use of glamourous 1950s portraits, of dapper suited men and Hollywood stars, mashed together with postcards of landscapes and with other faces, has the effect of the uncanny. In 2012, Stezaker won the Deutsche Börse photography prize to a mixed reception, as a few critics questioned whether a conceptual artist – who deals with the destruction of photographs – could win a prestigious photography award, proving that collage as an art form continues to be nothing if not controversial.

Featured images: Edward Kienholz, image via Rolling Stone; Edward Kienholz – Back Seat Dodge ’38, 1934, image via flickr.
Featured images: Louise Nevelson, image via pbs.org; Louise Nevelson – Tropical Garden II, 1957, image via tumblr.

Collotype – Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
This is an early example of assemblage in which two and three dimensional objects are combined. The word “Merz,” which Schwitters used to describe his art practice as well as his individual pieces, is a nonsensical word, like Dada, that Schwitters culled from the word “commerz”, the meaning of which he described as follows: “In the war, things were in terrible turmoil. What I had learned at the academy was of no use to me. Everything had broken down and new things had to be made out of the fragments; and this is Merz”. In his Merzpictures, which have been called “psychological collages,” he arranged found objects – usually detritus – in simple compositions that transformed trash into beautiful works of art. Whether the materials were string, a ticket stub, or a chess piece, Schwitters considered them to be equal with any traditional art material. Merz, however, is not ideological, dogmatic, hostile, or political as is much of Dada art.

Collaging with monotype prints is a unique way to bring two artforms, collaging and printmaking, together. Students prepare a gel plate with a positive or negative image, adding thin objects like string or stencils as they like, then press block printing paper to their plates to create one-of-a-kind images. These images can then be compiled, whole, torn, cut, folded, or shaped, along with additional prints or other materials and additional, dimensional elements, and mounted to a sheet of Arnhem Printmaking Paper for a two-in-one lesson in printmaking and collaging.
A collage is simply the convergence of a multitude of different materials into a single art piece. Collage artists might work with objects like newsprint, photographs, tissue, wrapping paper, fabric, painted canvas, or dimensional objects like feathers, buttons, beans, or corkscrews, or both. This variety of media provides visual interest, depth, texture, and color, and can aid in the communication of an artist’s story or message.

This year is the centenary of Dada. It was born in 1916 in the Cabaret Voltaire, a nightclub in Zurich opened by German poet Hugo Ball and performer Emmy Hennings. Refugee artists and writers from all over Europe were among its founding members – Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco were Romanian; Hans Arp was Alsatian and Sophie Taeuber, Swiss. Germans Richard Huelsenbeck and Hans Richter were also confederates. Bringing together a confluence of avant-gardes, Dada’s absurdist response to the grotesque cataclysm of the First World War effected a permanent revolution in the relationship of art to society. Art could no longer be relied upon to please or even to be in earnest.
Tableau Rastadada (1920), Francis Picabia. © ADAGP, Paris and DACS London 2016

References:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblage_(art)
http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/3318/top-10-collage-artists-hannah-hoch-to-man-ray
http://www.widewalls.ch/assemblage-artists/
http://m.theartstory.org/movement/dada/artworks/
http://blog.schoolspecialty.com/creative-collage-art-lesson-plan/
http://www.apollo-magazine.com/what-is-dada-and-how-much-is-it-worth/
http://www.ducksters.com/history/art/ancient_egyptian_art.php