The Age of Collage 3: Contemporary Collage in Modern Art

The third and concluding volume in Gestalten's Age of Collage series surveys collage as it stood in 2020, tracking a medium defined by juxtaposition, appropriation, and the recombination of found imagery into new, often uncanny, wholes.

Edited by Dennis Busch and Francesca Gavin, the book gathers work by more than sixty international artists, presented as visual portfolios interspersed with short statements on process, materials, and intent. Contributors range from artists working strictly by hand, cutting and pasting found photographs, magazines, and ephemera, to others who build their compositions digitally, and the book treats both as continuous with a single lineage. Published in a full-color, stitch-bound hardcover with a cloth cover, it runs to 320 pages.

Busch, a German collage artist known for hand-cut work built from vintage photography, originated the series with the first volume in 2013 and has edited all three installments Gavin, a London-based curator and critic and art editor at Twin magazine, joins as co-editor for this closing volume. Together the three books trace collage's shift from a niche craft revival into a widely practiced contemporary medium.