Curiosity cabinets were a trend among the elite in the 1500s, with people such as Gabriel Kaltermarckt recommending that one’s cabinet should include a collection of various curious objects such as the feathers and horns of strange animals and odd trinkets from abroad. However, many of the traditional folk arts were in essence assemblage arts, and over the years the requirement for being considered an artist has become less focused on one’s formal training and more on one’s unique artistic style of execution and presentation.Īlthough the term “Assemblage art” was only first used in the 1950s it was preceded by various artistic and cultural forms that incorporated real-life objects dating as far back as the Renaissance period. This work is a good example of collage assemblage art Kurt Schwitters, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons The concept of choosing objects instead of creating them subverted the conventional idea of what being an artist meant.ĭas Undbild (1919) by Kurt Schwitters, located in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Stuttgart, Germany.

To the traditional artists of the past, the notions of originality and authorship were fundamental to art, yet Assemblage artists brought those notions into question by utilizing premade commercial products in their pieces.

Assemblage artists challenged this notion by combining various forms and styles with readymade objects.Īssemblages recontextualize everyday objects by giving them a new meaning through their novel connection to other objects in the piece, thereby elevating them from junk into art. Photograph of Jean Dubuffet in 1960 Paolo Monti, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsĮventually, Assemblage art examples would emerge that would push the perceived boundaries of the form into new artistic directions, resulting in Assemblage sculpture installations and innovative performance pieces.Įstablishing an Assemblage Definition in Artįor many years, formal art academics were advocates of the notion of “medium specificity”, which stipulated that the various art forms such as sculpture, painting, and performance arts all adhered to their specific principles and had unique qualities and traits that separated them. This hybridized style was previously referred to as Accumulations and Combines by various artists until the term Assemblage art was coined by Jean Dubuffet in the 1950s. Artists such as Marcel Duchamp used pieces of junk and commercial products to create scathingly satirical commentaries about our modern commercially-driven culture. 4.2 What Is the Assemblage Definition in Art?Īssemblage artists produced mixed-media, three-dimensional assemblages that blurred the lines between everyday life and art.3.4 The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972) by Betye Saar.3.3 Homage to New York (1960) by Jean Tinguely.3.2 Monogram (1959) by Robert Rauschenberg.3.1 The Mechanical Head (The Spirit of Our Time) (1920) by Raoul Hausmann.

1.1 Establishing an Assemblage Definition in Art.

Precieved notion definition