"Cut-and-Paste Culture: The New Collage" Writing Reflection

With the sheer abundance of various forms of imagery that, in a sense, shape our lives thanks to the constant access we have to them, artists are able to pull from immeasurable sources to create contemporary collages. While we have nonstop accessibility of imagery, information, and assorted media that can be sometimes overwhelming, the modern collage is capable of reshaping these varied bits of media into something different and more immediately processed. Though former styles of collage art would also take bits and pieces of information and imagery of the time and create something new out of them, the number of available media has increased by an untold amount, as have the types of media that are now available to pull from.

It would seem to me that collage art appeals to artists as a way of coping with modern life. As mentioned before, information is never turned off in our internet-connected lives. Media of various types are constantly with us. Collage art appears to be a way of handling the near-constant imagery. Additionally, while art has certainly always been able to make a statement based on the viewpoints of the artist, contemporary collage art has the added ability to take modern culture and imagery and recreate them into social commentary due to the vast amounts of source material available to the artist.