assemblage (art)

In the visual arts, any three-dimensional work of art constructed of various, and often unusual, materials, or found objects. The term was first used in the 1950s by French painter Jean Dubuffet to describe his collages and figures created from pieces of wood, sponge, paper, and glue. Junk art refers to three-dimensional assemblages constructed solely of waste and discarded materials.

Rooted in cubist collage and the early sculptural assemblages of Picasso and the Italian Futurists, 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 1950s and early 1960s reaffirmed it as a technique central to much of 20th-century art, typified in the ‘combine’ paintings of US pop artist Robert Rauschenberg.