Ades, D., & Herrmann, D. (2014). Hannah Höch. New York: Prestel.
This is one of the first books I looked at over the summer while figuring out what to do for my thesis project. I started out looking into Höch's work because she is arguably the most famous female collage artist. I wasn't too familiar with many other collage artists yet so I thought this was a good place to start out. It familiarized me better with Höch's work and introduced me to a LOT of her work I had never seen. The writing in the book was minimal but it allowed me to learn her basic history and background as well as see a wide collection of her work.
Lavin, M. (1993). Cut with the kitchen knife: The Weimar photomontages of Hannah Höch. New Haven: Yale University Press.
This book on Höch had a lot more writing in it. I learned a bit about her process and about the topics she worked with. It was very interesting to read about what she thought about when making her works and why she made them. I find it hard to find books that really share how artists make work as they are often just showcasing the work with very minimal writing. This book was a really great source! She is quoted in the book as saying that she likes to cut up pictures because it gives them new and numerous meanings as it is removed from any context. There are infinite juxtapositions, contrasts and connections in Dada and Surrealist collage which is why I really love it. It can mean one thing to one person and another thing to somebody else, so was great to read about what she intended her work to say but to also know that she didn't really mind if people thought differently of it. It could be such a beautiful composition but mean something truly terrible and vice versa.
Robinson, H. (2001). Feminism-art-theory: An anthology, 1968-2000. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
This book had pretty heavy content and I admittedly did not read the whole thing. I skimmed through a few of the essays that popped out at me and got some good stuff out of it. I wanted to look at this book because I never really read much about theory and also because I think feminist art is important. I am still not sure how much of a feminist voice my work will have but it is still important for me to research it. I am definitely going to go back to this book over the Christmas break to see what else I can pull from it.
Siegel, E., & Bello, P. (2009). Playing with pictures: The art of Victorian photocollage. Chicago, Ill.: Art Institute of Chicago ;.
I saw this exhibition at the AGO a few years back and it has always sort of been my driving force with wanting to do collage art. I loved how playful the works were and that they included both painting and collage. I never read up about the work much after the exhibit but it was always stuck in the back of my mind. I was looking around at the Reference Library and was excited to see this book there as I forgot there was a publication to go with the exhibit. It had a lot more writing in it then I expected which was awesome! I learned that it was mostly women that made these beautiful collages and that they made them for their family photo albums. These women were mostly part of royal families so all of the figures pictured in the collages are their relatives. The collages "represent ways in which many women understood their femininity and that the spaces and objects depicted are largely domestic". The author also stated that the works gave "fantasy to truthful records". I like this idea that you can turn something real into something completely not real.
Wallace, I., & Augaitis, D. (2012). Ian Wallace: At the intersection of painting and photography. London: Black Dog Pub.
I have always wanted to try and incorporate painting in my work somehow as painting was always my forte growing up and I don't do too much of it anymore, so I thought i'd look through this book to stay open to the idea. I had not heard of Ian Wallace before but I picked this book up and liked what I saw! It's hard to make works that cohesively go together when you are using mixed media elements. Wallace does an excellent job doing so. I like how much variety there is in his work and how he explores many different mediums. There were even some collage pieces in the book which was cool to see.
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