Assemblage
A technique of making a three-dimensional work by combining disparate elements, above all found or ready-made objects; also the resulting work.
An assemblage (from French) is a three-dimensional work put together from disparate parts, most often everyday objects that the artist has found, collected or bought; the word also names the technique. An assemblage may include elements painted, carved or modelled by the artist.
Assemblage is distinguished from neighbouring concepts. Collage is the sticking of materials onto a different support, that is, work primarily on a surface; assemblage moves into three dimensions, and Ukrainian art historians treat it as a further development of collage towards the art of the object. An installation, in turn, is a spatial composition that creates an environment the viewer may enter, whereas an assemblage remains a discrete object.
The term was coined in 1953 by Jean Dubuffet. The origins of the technique are seen in Pablo Picasso’s cubist constructions (from 1912) and in Kurt Schwitters’s works made of scavenged materials (from 1918); in the 1950s and 1960s assemblage became widespread, notably in the work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. The Getty thesaurus applies the term to works made since about 1945 and refers earlier ones to “object sculpture”. Louise Nevelson, a native of Pereiaslav, is connected with Ukraine: in 1944 she first showed a series of abstract wooden compositions in this technique. In Ukrainian unofficial art of the 1970s Fedir Tetianych made assemblages, and Mykola Trehub combined painting with glued-on objects.
