Organic Décollage

Décollage

In art Décollage is created by cutting, ripping off or removing pieces of an original image or images to reveal the sub-straight/s or the images that lie beneath. A distinct genre of Décollage is the torn poster. This is where poster has been pasted upon poster and then cut or torn to reveal the poster or posters underneath; or where ripped poster fragments are pasted, layer upon layer, to a canvas or sub-straight to create a new montage.

This genre is strongly associated with Mimmo Rotella^[1] and it is claimed ^[2] that he invented it after returning from America in 1953 convinced that nothing in art was original. He had what he later described as a "Zen illumination" - the discovery of the advertising poster as a form of artistic expression.^[3] Armed with a penknife he went out ripping off posters and pieces of the zinc mounts from Rome's council advertising sites; and Rotella was labelled the 'poster ripper' or the 'painter of glued paper'. Rotella exhibited his 'torn posters' for the first time at "Esposizione d'arte attuale" in 1955 and the term Décollage was claimed for this genre in the same year by poet, artist and fellow Italian Emilio Villa^[4]. However this French word, meaning to unstick, first appeared in print in 1938 in Dictionnaire Abrégé du Surréalisme and notably from 1949 on Hain was creating pieces from posters he had torn from Parisian walls.^[5]

Organic Décollage

Organic Décollage is the phrased used, or coined, by the photographer Maria Stengard-Green^[6] to describe the naturally occurring and / or non-artistically organised Décollage that not only echoes the work of Rome’s own Mimmo Rotella but also Raymond Hains, Villeglé, Yves Klein and Robert Rauschenberg; but who's antecedents doubtless influenced their pioneering work. 'Whilst organic decollage appears random, the mere effect of nature, it also reveals the ego, ideals and aspirations of the people who interfere with natures interference; creating layers, nuance and sometimes meaning' — Maria Stengard-Green^[7]. This was particularly illustrated by the 2008 Italian election battle for Rome's City Council poster sites; an interesting reflection on Rotella's possible, and probable, "Zen illumination".

References

1. ^ http://www.rogallery.com/rotella_mimmo/rotella-biography.htm
2. ^ http://www.markkostabi.com/shout/nov00.htm
3. ^ http://www.rogallery.com/rotella_mimmo/rotella-biography.htm
4. ^ http://www.ulu-late.com/english/atlas/villa.htm
5. ^ http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=587
6. ^ http://pingmag.jp/2008/12/03/maria-stengard-green-about-organic-decollage/
7. ^ "Maria Stengard-Green Biography". http://www.stengard-green.com/biography0908.html. 

External links

• Mimmo Rotella at CollageMuseum
• Mimmo Rotella at The Aras Gallery
• Mimmo Rotella at ArtNet
• Mimmo Rotella Obituary at the New York Times
• Mimmo Rotella Obituary at the Independent