Bricolage

An improvised creation ? or seemingly so ? something made from whatever materials happen to be available. From the French bricole, meaning a trifle, and which the French used even earlier to mean catapault. Bricolage may be related to bric-a-brac.Quote: Bricolage is a word "sometimes applied to artistic works in a sense similar to collage: an assemblage improvised from materials ready to hand, or the practice of transforming 'found' materials by incorporating them in a new work." C. Baldick, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford U Press, 1990, p. 26. "By refiguring the page as an invention, bricolage provides for the possibility of creating an intertext, a no-space and an everyplace where writing can shift from topic to topic." Bricolage provides a "working alternative to compartmentalized systems of knowledge production / display." Nicholas Paley, Finding Art's Place: Experiments in Contemporary Education and Culture, New York and London, Routledge, 1995, p. 9. "My main interest is bricolage, in why and how people make things, from cars to concentration camps. I love Calder, who's the ultimate bricolage artist ? he was trained as an engineer. Bricolage is a French word. It means to build it yourself." Tom Sachs (contemporary) American artist. In an interview by Deborah Solomon about his part in a Nazi-inspired exhibition and the connection between fashion and fascism, New York Times Magazine, March 10, 2002, page 19. See fascist aesthetic, fashion, and mobile. Also see Arte Povera, assemblage, collage, construction, coulage, d?coupage, farrago, femmage, frottage, fumage, marouflage, montage, parsemage, pastiche, photomontage, and pique assiette (also called picassiette).