Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage was the first survey exhibition of collage ever to take place anywhere in the world. Collage is often described as a twentieth-century invention, but this show spanned a period of more than 400 years and included more than 250 works.
From Sat 29 Jun 2019 – Sun 27 Oct 2019
Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art (Modern Two)
A huge range of approaches were on show, from sixteenth-century anatomical ‘flap prints’, to computer-based images; work by amateur, professional and unknown artists; collages by children and revolutionary cubist masterpieces by Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris; from nineteenth century do-it-yourself collage kits to collage films of the 1960s. Highlights included a three-metre-long folding collage screen, purportedly made in part by Charles Dickens; a major group of Dada and Surrealist collages, by artists such as Kurt Schwitters, Joan Miró, Hannah Höch and Max Ernst; and major postwar works by Henri Matisse, Robert Rauschenberg, and Peter Blake, including the only surviving original source photographs for Blake’s and Jann Haworth’s iconic, collaged cover for the Beatles’ album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Illustration: Natalya Goncharova, Costume Design for One of the Three Kings