Picasso and Braque created the first Cubist collages in 1912. They incorporated printed material, such as newspaper or wallpaper, into their paintings and drawings, bringing new life to the play of illusion that was an important element of Cubism. These printed fragments were real objects that stood as images of themselves. In the same year, Picasso also started making three-dimensional assemblages of diverse ‘found’ materials, playing on a similar ambiguity between object and image.

The invention of collage, where art might be made out of everyday throwaway materials, has informed the course of much art of the last century. This display of British art of the last fifty years examines the continued relevance of this discovery for artistic practice. Constructed from rupture and discontinuity, collage offered artists and viewers a new way of seeing the world, bringing together disparate and sometimes contradictory elements to which often surprising meanings can immediately be given.

Often playful, this new way of understanding the world can also have a critical or polemical purpose. This is particularly true of the technique of photo-montage: collages constructed from photographs. This display traces the development of one aspect of the interchange between fine art and mass culture that still lies at the heart of contemporary art.

This display has been devised by curator Andrew Wilson

BP British Art Displays 1500-2008