Papiers collés are collages made only with bits of paper decoupage, which means cutting, consists of cutting out colored paper or images and then gluing them to an object photomontage uses photographs and images from mass-media sources, while assemblage is a three-dimensional accumulation of objects. Art historians make technical differentiations between collage techniques based on the materials an artist uses. From the French meaning 'to glue,' collage describes the technique of composing an artwork by gluing a wide range of materials - including pieces of paper, fabric, newspaper clippings, and sometimes readymade objects - to a surface.

Because images can take on new meanings in new contexts, collage can subvert traditional meanings and at the same time multiply meanings, creating works that don't easily settle into single, fixed analyses.

Whether purposefully or randomly composed, the juxtapositions between images and objects created by the collage technique have long intrigued artists.

Contemporary artists continue to explore the richness of collage in their efforts to question assumptions, biases, and pressing political crises. Because collage often incorporates mass-produced images, the practice is often inseparable from its historical and political context, making it a mode of powerful social commentary. Adopted by subsequent artists, collage became a dominant technique in the Dada, Surrealist, Pop Art, and Neo-Dada movements, each using the technique to explore different subject matters. Combining painting, real-world objects, images, and ephemera into a single work, collage directly questions the tendency to separate fine art from everyday objects, the delineations between so-called high and low culture, and the status of the artist.

A common technique practiced by decorators, advertising agencies, and hobbyists alike, collage upended the fine-art world when Cubists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso incorporated bits of newspaper and printed wallpaper into their paintings, subverting traditional definitions of what is important art.

Colage photoartist