(22.875″x18″; gouache and ink on paper; 2014). Courtesy of the artist.
FROM KOLAJ 26
What does an uncollage look like before it was made into a seamless whole?
In the second installment in his four-part series exploring the notion of Uncollage, Todd Bartel asks, What does an uncollage look like before it was made into a seamless whole?
This article appeared in Kolaj #26. To see the entire issue, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.
(14″x11″; mixed media collage; 1999). Courtesy of the artist.
With such a vast and infinitely expansive playground for composite imagery, after the modernist revolution, painting became a wonderfully magnanimous activity in which the traditional palette—which once solely held pigments, extenders, and solvents—was expanded to include any importable object in the world. Furthermore, the advent of collage also evolved to include virtual examples of itself. It is to this kind of undoing—of the need to be physically pasted—for which this second of the Uncollage series lays the groundwork. If the end product of an uncollage looks like a painting—or a digital collage or a film, both of which I explore in Part III of the series—what does an uncollage look like before it is made into a seamless whole? In this article, I examine various forms of transferred imagery via the working methods of Grandma Moses (1860-1961); Ginnie Gardiner (1951- ), and Talin Megherian (1962- ).
(17.75″x26″; oil on pressed wood; 1945). Bennington Museum, Museum purchase 1986.310
This article appeared in Kolaj #26. To see the entire issue, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.
Todd Bartel is a collage-based artist. His work assumes assembled forms of painting, drawing and sculpture that examine the roles of landscape and nature in contemporary culture. Since 2002, Bartel has taught drawing, painting, sculpture, installation art and conceptual art at the Cambridge School of Weston, Weston, Massachusetts. He is the founder and the Director of the Cambridge School’s Thompson Gallery, a teaching gallery dedicated to thematic inquiry, and “IS” (Installation Space), a proposal-based installation gallery. Bartel holds a BFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in painting from Carnegie Mellon University. Bartel’s Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory page has more information, as well as his website, www.toddbartel.com.