col|lage

col|lage «kuh LAHZH», noun, verb, -laged, -lag|ing.

–n.

1. the art of making pictures by pasting on a background such things as parts of photographs and newspapers, fabric, and string. Sometimes paint is added. Collage is used especially in abstract or surrealistic compositions. »

It was apparently Picasso—next to children, perhaps, the greatest innovator of them all—who took up collage seriously; and his concern with it…is generally believed to have been a part of all the experimenting…that so engrossed the early Cubists (New Yorker).

2. a composition so made: »

Jean Arp, whose blandly impish sculpture, paintings, and collages are one of the pleasures of modern art, was looking at a show of his own works (Newsweek).

3. Figurative. anything made of odd parts or pieces; a composite or mixture: »

a collage of fabrics, a collage of ideas.

–v.t.

to compose in the form of a collage: »

The platform is painted and collaged in Rauschenberg's customary manner, with such random objects as a tennis ball, a rubber heel, a shirt sleeve (New Yorker).

╂[< Middle French collage a gluing < Old French colle < Vulgar Latin colla < Greek kólla glue]