Mixed media art is a type of artwork in which multiple media are used. There is an important difference between “mixed media” artworks and “multimedia art”. Mixed media means a work of visual art that combines numerous traditionally unique visual art media. To provide an example, a work on canvas that mixes paint, ink, and collage may properly be called a “mixed media” work, but not a work of “multimedia art.” The term multimedia art indicates a broader range than mixed media, which fuses visual art with non-visual materials (including recorded sound, for example) or with elements of other arts (such as literature, theatre, dance, motion graphics, music or interactive).
What we all know today as mixed media art began in the early 20th century, when artists looking for a substitute for what they considered to be recalcitrant academicism began to include things and images that were not considered art materials in their works. Examples of everyday materials being included in ceremonial or aesthetic objects can be found dating back to prehistory, however these were produced for different reasons and served quite a different social purpose compared to the objects we all refer to. as “art”.
Picasso’s Still Life with Chair painting (May 1912) is often considered the first modern collage, it is actually an assemblage of oil paint, oil canvas, pasted paper, as well as rope, making it a three-dimensional work in bas-relief . The first collages constructed solely from paper, on the other hand, were made by Braque in the summer of 1912, when he used woodgrain wallpaper in a series of charcoal drawings. After a brief lull in collage activity, the art scene of the 1920s saw the arrival of German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters’ remarkable variety of personal expressions achieved in collage and assemblage. He fixed papers found every day, as well as things of all kinds, on canvases, papers and cardboard supports, giving them another and probably more remarkable life.
In the 1930s, Henri Matisse used cut paper forms as preparatory work for commissioned elements to be executed in other media. But in 1947, he published a small collection of twenty color plates of his cut-out designs. Joseph Cornell’s work on box assemblies as sets in the early 1940s began the Abstract Expressionists’ pursuit of collage as an art form. The freedom of expression engendered by explorations of collage went directly into the assemblages, constructions, and also combines paintings of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jean Dubuffet, and Ellsworth Kelly, as well as their experimental work in the 1950s and 1960s. And his particular work in turn created the conditions for the installations, appropriations, settings and works of new objects of the 1980s and 1990s.
Mixed media art, building on the efforts of early artists, made mixed media an art form accessible to skilled and novice artists alike. Assemblage and collage can be obtained in combination with acrylic and watercolor painting, patterned art, sculpture, and altered books. Fibers, torn papers, inks, glitter and beads are making their way into artwork and commercial items like greeting cards and quilts. The near future of mixed media, it seems, is limited only by the creativity of the artists and whatever else they can get their hands on.