Lesson 10: Juxtaposition and Scale
Pre A Level Art & Design · Unit 3 · U3·L1 · ← L09 | L11 →
At a glance
| Session | W11, one Wednesday double (~90 min) — Unit 3 opens |
| Dates | Wed 2026-11-11 |
| Focus | What collage is; juxtaposition and scale — “two images say a third thing” |
| Deliverable | Vocabulary in the sketchbook; two fast cut-and-paste studies (one juxtaposition, one scale) |
| Feeds | The experiment set that CS3 checks (W13) starts today |
| Homework | Collect raw material — old magazines, printed photos (including your own U2 frames), packaging, tickets; ≥20 usable images by next week; MB posting |
Goal
In Unit 2 you chose images; now you cut them apart and make them argue. The unit’s spine: combine · meaning — a collage is not decoration, it is a sentence built from stolen words. Today establishes the two cheapest tools for meaning: juxtaposition (two things that don’t belong together, together) and scale (the wrong size, on purpose).
How it runs
- Warm-up (10 min) — the word itself: coller, “to glue.” Write four terms in your sketchbook — collage (glued combination of found/made images), papier collé (glued paper shapes), photomontage (collage made from photographs), assemblage (collage gone 3D).
- The lecture (20 min) — a brisk arc: Picasso and Braque glue newspaper into paintings (1912) → Hannah Höch cuts up Weimar Germany (Dada photomontage) → Matisse cuts pure color → Moholy-Nagy and Rodchenko build photomontage posters → contemporary digital collage. One question per stop: what did gluing let them say that painting couldn’t?
- The two tools (10 min) — juxtaposition: the Picasso-and-Höch diptych side by side — same era, opposite temperaments. Scale: a teacup taller than a building means something; a person smaller than a shoe means something else. The rule: a collage decision is a meaning decision.
- Studio: first cuts (35 min) — two fast A5 studies from the shared material bin, using scissors only today: (1) a juxtaposition study — two images that have no business together, one new meaning; (2) a scale study — one element deliberately the wrong size. Glue only after a dry-fit. Title each with one line: “this says …”
- Close (15 min) — table walk-through: a partner names the third thing your two images say. If they can’t, the juxtaposition is decoration, not meaning yet. Studies go into the sketchbook, then the homework brief (the material harvest).
Materials and safety
Scissors only this session (knives enter at L11 with the safety brief): scissors, glue sticks, A5/A4 cartridge, the class material bin (pre-stocked magazines + printed images). Start collecting your own material today — a collage is only as good as its harvest.
Assessment
Nothing graded today; both studies open the experiment set that CS3 checks at W13. Register: PAL S1 Assessments.