Assemblage

Assemblage, in the visual arts, any work of art composed of a variety of objects, particularly found objects. The term was first used in the early 1950s by French avant-garde painter Jean Dubuffet to describe his collages and figures created from bits of wood, sponge, paper, and glue. The term “junk art” refers to three-dimensional assemblages constructed solely of waste and discarded materials.

Rooted in Cubist collage and the early sculptural assemblages of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and the members of the Italian Futurist movement, particularly Umberto Boccioni, the technique was later experimented with by the Dadaists and Surrealists for its symbolic and satirical possibilities. The Dada revival of the mid-1950s reaffirmed assemblage as a technique central to much 20th-century art, typified in the so-called 'combine' works of American Pop Artist Robert Rauschenberg.