Assemblage, or the art of giving a second life to the ghosts of everyday life
Imagine a New York studio in 1955, bathed in harsh light filtering through grimy windows. On a wooden table pockmarked with paint stains, a stuffed angora goat stares at the visitor with its glass eyes. Around its body, a worn car tire—like a black halo or a mechanical chastity belt. The artist, Robert Rauschenberg, circles the assemblage, adding a dab of red paint here, a hastily nailed wooden plank there. Four years later, this strange hybrid creature—dubbed Monogram—would become one of the most controversial works of the 20th century, a silent manifesto against the very idea of conventional beauty.
By Artedusa
••9 min readAssemblage is not just a technique. It is a philosophy, a way of looking at the world and seeing poetry where others see only waste. A crumpled tram ticket, a rusted bicycle wheel, a torn umbrella—these objects, discarded by the relentless flow of consumption, become, under the hands of artists, fragments of a new mythology. But how do these creations, born of salvage, transcend their humble origins to achieve the status of art? And why, nearly a century after Duchamp’s first readymades, do they continue to fascinate as much as they unsettle?
01When waste tells the story of the world
There is something deeply subversive in the idea of turning a used object into a work of art. As if, by removing it from its utilitarian context, the artist offers it a second chance to signify—or rather, reveals what it already signified, without anyone bothering to notice. Take Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (1913): a simple wheel mounted upside down on a kitchen stool. At first glance, nothing more banal. Yet by presenting it as sculpture, Duchamp was not merely provoking. He was asking a fundamental question: what if art lay not in the artist’s hand, but in the viewer’s gaze?
This idea would upend the course of modern art. In 1920s Germany, Kurt Schwitters, an artist little known at the time, collected tram tickets, pieces of driftwood, and newspaper scraps to create his Merzbau—monumental installations made from urban waste. "Everything the world rejects, everything that is destroyed, everything that is despised, I use to create," he wrote. His studio in Hanover resembled an organic cave, piled high with thousands of disparate objects, each carrying within it the story of its own obsolescence. When the Nazis came to power, they labeled his work "degenerate." Schwitters went into exile in Norway, carrying with him the belief that art could emerge from what society deemed worthless.
This fascination with refuse was not merely aesthetic. It was deeply political. In post-war Europe, where cities were nothing but fields of ruins, artists like Joseph Beuys used humble materials—felt, fat, charred wood—to evoke both destruction and rebirth. His Fat Chair (1964), where a block of fat slowly melts on a seat, is at once a metaphor for precarity and a provocation: how dare one present this as art? Yet it is precisely this tension between the noble and the abject that gives assemblage its power.
02The gesture that transforms the ordinary into the sacred
What distinguishes assemblage from mere tinkering is intention. An artist like Arman, for instance, did not simply accumulate identical objects—he arranged them according to a logic almost musical. His Poubelles (1959–1960), piles of carefully sorted trash, resemble visual scores. Each piece of refuse, each shard of glass or scrap of metal, becomes a note in a symphony of urban chaos. "I do not create, I reveal," he said. As if, by arranging these objects in a certain order, he brought forth a hidden truth about our relationship to the world.
But assemblage can also be profoundly intimate. Louise Bourgeois, in her Cells (1990–2008), used personal objects—worn clothing, antique furniture, broken mirrors—to create claustrophobic installations, like fragments of memory made tangible. In Cell (Choisy) (1990–1993), a miniature guillotine stands in the center of a room surrounded by mirrors, evoking both violence and the repetition of trauma. Here, the found object is not merely material: it is a witness, a silent accomplice to human drama.
This narrative dimension is particularly striking in Daniel Spoerri’s work, whose Snare Pictures (1960) freeze scenes of daily life like snapshots. In The Lunch Under the Grass (1983), he buried an entire meal in a park—cutlery, plates, and food scraps—only to unearth it years later as a work of art. Assemblage thus becomes a form of archaeology of the present, where each object bears the traces of its past use.
03The magic of chance and the alchemy of materials
There is, in assemblage, an element of chance that fascinates. Unlike painting or traditional sculpture, where the artist controls every detail, assemblage leaves room for the unexpected. Robert Rauschenberg recounted that the goat in Monogram was originally meant for another project. It was only when he saw it lying around his studio that he had the idea to incorporate it into a canvas, then surround it with a tire. The result? A work that appears both deliberate and accidental, as if it had always existed in that form.
This "tinkerer’s" approach—noble in its essence—lies at the heart of assemblage. Jean Tinguely, with his self-destructing machines, pushed this logic to its extreme. His Homage to New York (1960), a mechanical sculpture designed to self-destruct in public, was both a performance and a meditation on the ephemeral. The materials he used—wire, bicycle wheels, salvaged motors—were not chosen for their beauty, but for their capacity to transform, to break, to create movement.
Today, artists like Tara Donovan carry on this tradition, using mundane industrial materials—plastic cups, staples, straws—to create organic forms that seem alive. Her accumulations of transparent cups (Untitled (Plastic Cups), 2006) evoke clouds, coral, or crystalline structures, as if plastic, that symbol of pollution, could suddenly metamorphose into something sublime.
04When art becomes a mirror of society
If assemblage reached its golden age in the 1950s and 1960s, it was because it reflected a time of profound upheaval. Consumer society was emerging, cities were being rebuilt, and artists sensed that something was being lost. By using manufactured objects, waste, and refuse, they gave a voice to what was usually ignored.
Take Ed Kienholz’s The Beanery (1965), an installation that recreates a seedy bar populated by mannequins with blurred faces, like ghosts of the night. The walls are covered in yellowed newspapers, the tables cluttered with dirty glasses and overflowing ashtrays. The work is both a social critique and a celebration of marginality. "I want people to smell the spilled beer and sweat," Kienholz said. And it is precisely this desire to bring reality into art that makes assemblage so powerful.
Today, in the age of the Anthropocene, this approach takes on new meaning. Artists like El Anatsui transform metal bottle caps into monumental tapestries, evoking both the richness of traditional African fabrics and the pollution caused by mass consumption. His works, like Dusasa II (2007), are hymns to resilience, proof that even waste can become masterpieces.
05The art market and the challenge of authenticity
Yet assemblage raises a crucial question: how do you value a work born of salvage? A collector who buys a Rauschenberg canvas is not just acquiring materials—they are buying an idea, a gesture, a story. But how can one ensure that this story is authentic? In the 1960s, forgers attempted to replicate Rauschenberg’s Combines using similar objects. The problem? The originality lay not in the materials, but in the way they were assembled.
Today, museums and galleries face another challenge: conservation. Assemblage works, often fragile, degrade over time. The goat in Monogram loses its fur, tires crack, paper yellows. Should these works be restored, at the risk of betraying the artist’s intent? Or should they be left to age, like living beings? In 1980, the original tire in Monogram had to be replaced. Some purists cried scandal. Others saw in this restoration a metaphor for the work itself: an object in constant evolution.
For art lovers, assemblage offers a unique opportunity. Unlike traditional paintings or sculptures, these works are often more accessible. An artist like Arman produced hundreds of accumulations, some sold at affordable prices. But beware: authenticity is key. Always check provenance, certificates, and be wary of copies that seem too perfect.
06Assemblage, an art that defies time
In an era where everything seems disposable, assemblage reminds us that objects have souls. They carry within them the traces of those who used, loved, or abandoned them. By transforming them into art, artists do not merely recycle—they resurrect forgotten stories.
Take Taryn Simon’s The Innocents (2002), a series of photographs where objects linked to miscarriages of justice—a bloodstained shirt, a rusted knife—become symbols of a flawed justice system. Each object tells a broken life, a suppressed truth. Here, assemblage is not just aesthetic: it is political.
And perhaps that is where its power lies. In a world saturated with sleek images and standardized products, assemblage offers an alternative: an art that breathes, that bears the scars of time, that dares to be imperfect. As Kurt Schwitters put it: "Art does not consist in creating beauty, but in revealing what is already beautiful."
So the next time you come across an abandoned object—a battered suitcase, a rusted bicycle, a chipped cup—ask yourself: what if this were the beginning of a work of art? What if, by looking at it differently, you gave it a second life? After all, that may be the true genius of assemblage: teaching us to see beauty where others see only waste.