ART: PRIVATE VIEW
Collage Crane Kalman Gallery, London
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Your support makes all the difference.The Pasted Paper Revolution, as the American critic Clement Greenberg described it in 1958, began with Braque gluing a piece of wood-grain paper to the surface of a drawing in 1912. Of course people had stuck things together before, but not in a way that constituted art. The rest is history, and collage has become one of the great inventions of 20th-century art.
From 1912, it played a key role in Braque's work and in that of his cubist colleagues Picasso and Gris; it was a useful tool for the Constructivists (there are good works here by Popova and Moholy-Nagy) and a crucial one for the Surrealists. Pop art was built on it and all manner of other artists have used it in their work since, including, in the selection here, George Grosz, Robert Motherwell and, of course, Mr Stickit himself, Kurt Schwitters. Among the British works are a fine Ben Nicholson still life from 1933, and a delightful little "dream landscape" assembled by Julian Trevelyan in 1938.
This is an academically minded selection of nearly 60 collages made over 80 years. Not a complete survey, but a considered study nonetheless, and one which manages to be simultaneously serious and hugely enjoyable. It's well worth a visit.
Crane Kalman Gallery, 178 Brompton Road, London SW3 (0171-584 7566) to 7 Sept
Richard Ingleby
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