While the emergence of collage is frequently placed in the twentieth century when it was a favored medium of modern artists, its earliest beginnings are tied to the invention of paper in China around 200 BCE. Subsequent forms occurred in twelfth-century Japan with illuminated manuscripts that combined calligraphic poetry with torn colored papers. In early modern Europe, collage was used to document and organize herbaria, plant specimens, and other systems of knowledge. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, collage became firmly associated with the expression of intimate relations and familial affections. Fragmentary Forms offers a new, global perspective on one of the world鈥檚 oldest and most enduring means of cultural expression, tracing the rich history of collage from its ancient origins to its uses today as a powerful tool for storytelling and explorations of identity.
av福利社 the Author
Freya Gowrley is a leading scholar of the cultural lives of images and objects. She is based at the University of Bristol, where she writes about the relationship between art and identity from the early modern period to the present day. She is the author of Domestic Space in Britain, 1750鈥�1840: Materiality, Sociability, and Emotion.