Contemporary Collage in Modern Art

Extract page 152
While Simon Casson was born in York, England and raised in Zambia, it is none other than New York City that inspired him to experiment with the aesthetics of collage. “New York back in the 1990s proved to be a huge pull towards the fragmented mantle in my oeuve “, he shares, and in particular the sprawling city’s “bewilderingly giant billboards, many with wilting advertisements slowly giving way to the elements, rain-soaked, wind worn, revealing a beautiful patina of age, layer upon layer, peeling back…” Casson’s pieces, which are all made using only oil paint on canvas, challenge the common idea of what constitutes a collage : “I prefer the viewer to come to the piece believing perhaps that they will be closing in to spy on the ‘cheat’ of collage added to the oil paint, but in reality it is all paint emulating the press of another sheet of information, another glued seam.”