http://www.mahoodsculpture.com/ellsworth-kelly-sculpture/
A History Of Mixed Media Art
Mixed Media Art is a form of artwork where utilized~several mediums are utilized}. There is an immensely important distinction between “mixed-media” artworks and “multimedia art”. Mixed media mean a work of visual art that mixes numerous traditionally unique visual art media. To provide an example, a work on canvas that mixes paint, ink, and collage can appropriately be referred to as a “mixed media” work – but not a work of “multimedia art.” The term multimedia art means a broader range than mixed media, mixing visual art with non-visual components (including recorded sound, as an example) or with components of the other arts (for instance literature, drama, dance, motion graphics, music, or interactivity).
What we all know at this time as mixed media art began in the early 20th century, when artists in search of an alternative to what they found as hidebound academicism started including stuff and pictures that were certainly not regarded as art materials in their works. Examples of everyday items being included in ceremonial or aesthetic objects could be found dating back to prehistory, but these were created with different objectives, and served an extremely different social purpose compared to the materials all of us consider as “art.”
Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Painting (May 1912) is often regarded as the first modern collage, it is in fact an assemblage of oil paint, oil cloth, pasted paper, and rope, making it a low-relief, three-dimensional structure. The 1st collages constructed only of paper, on the contrary, were made by Braque in the summertime of 1912, when he included wood-grained wallpaper into a series of charcoal drawings. After a quick lull in collage activity, the 1920s’ art scene experienced the appearance of German dada artist Kurt Schwitters’s exciting variety of personal expressions done in collage and assemblage. He glued typical found papers and things of all types to canvas, paper, along with board supports, giving them a second and probably more prominent life.
In the 1930s, Henri Matisse used cut-paper shapes as basic work for commissioned pieces to be performed in other media. But in 1947, he released a small portfolio of 20 color plates of his cutout designs. Joseph Cornell’s work in stage just like boxed assemblages during the early 1940s started out the abstract expressionists’ exploration of collage as an art form. The freedom of expression engendered by means of collage explorations headed directly to the assemblages, constructions, and mix paintings of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jean Dubuffet, and Ellsworth Kelly, as well as to their experimental work in the 50′s and sixties. And their own work in turn created the conditions for the installations, appropriations, settings, and completely new object works of the eighties and 1990′s.
Mixed media art, drawing from the efforts of early artists, made mixed media an attainable art form for both expert and inexperienced artists. Assemblage and collage can be obtained blended with acrylic and watercolor painting, rubber-stamped art, sculpture and altered books. Fibers, torn papers, inks, glitter and beads are discovering their way into works of fine art as well as commercial pieces including greeting cards and quilts. The future of mixed media, like filming locations, it appears, is bound only by the creativity of artists and whatever they can get their own hands on.
Ellsworth Kelly at Hirshhorn Museum