Book Review: Collage: Contemporary Artists Hunt and Gather, Cut and Paste, Mash Up and Transform

Collage is authored by Danielle Krysa, the writer at popular art and design website The Jealous Curator. Krysa has also released another book earlier this year called Creative Block which I've also reviewed. Writing two books in a year is very productive.

This book features thirty contemporary artists together with a short profile of each and their collage artworks. There's a good diversity of work that are quite fun to look at. It's interesting to see what type of artwork people can come up with by cutting and pasting different photographs collected and mix them into some form of aesthetics using the interplay of shapes, negative space, textures and ideas.

Some of the works are very detailed, some amusing, and others capable of raising eyebrows. One artist Maria Aparicio Puentes used sewing threads for her work. Another artist Kathryn MacNaughton likes to use vintage porn magazines as source materials so there's some nudity in this book.

In addition to just featuring the artists, there was also a task assigned to each. The artists have to come up with a collage using a photograph of two mustache-clad cowboys where one's playing an accordion. The resulting collage is often unexpected and surprising.

It's a great book for those like collages as an art form. I certainly was entertained looking through all the works even though some left me scratching my head.

Collage: Contemporary Artists Hunt and Gather, Cut and Paste, Mash Up and Transform is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

Visit Amazon to check out more reviews.

If you buy from the links, I get a little commission that helps me get more books to feature.

Here are direct links to the book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp | Amazon.cn