Story & Evolution of Paper Art

According to several studies, analyses and articles about the future of paper, everything converges to say that this material is condemned to be forgotten. The thing is that usual functions of paper have been replaced by virtual supports, following the trend of e-books and online magazines. Will paper become a vintage item like vinyl or camera film? However, a strange and stunning paradox has emerged over the last years, coming from the fine arts world. Sculptors, designers and all kind of artists are developing a renewed interest for paper, perceived as an incredible creation material. Paper is therefore becoming an art medium which emphasizes handmade artworks.

Maud Vantours has a degree from the school ESAA Duperré based in Paris. She works as a free-lance designer and plastic artist. In spite of her young age, she has already collaborated with very important brands such as Guerlain, Adidas, Tag Heuer, Lancôme and Yves Saint Laurent. Fervently passionate about paper, she manipulates it with as much virtuosity as if it were metal, wood or plastic. Her universe is colorful and her artworks are developed in different dimensions, giving a sense of depth. She usually takes her inspiration from nature and abstraction, representing flowers, little animals or geometric shapes. Her love of harmony finds its expression in magnetic and hypnotic circles. Maud Vantours explores the medium in depth and creates innovative shapes with paper in order to give it a new interpretation.

Her paper sculptures caught the attention of some very well known magazines, like the French /span> Paulette or L’Officiel, which asked her to collaborate for some editorial and brand content project. One of her most memorable collaborations is undeniably the one for Adidas in 2014, which opened the way to new aesthetic approaches. For this occasion, Maud imagined a pair of ZX Flux among other great design and fashion names. In 2015, she produced marvelous enchanting installations for the perfume house Annick Goutal.

We asked her why paper is such an important support for her. “It is very simple to manipulate, it offers a lot of possibilities. Also, this material is very appreciated today. Paper art has a true viral power on Internet, a difference with metal artworks for instance”. Maud Vantours is one of these artists who decided to come back to manual works.

The duo Zim & Zou” target=”_blank”>Zim & Zou (Thibault Zimmerman and Lucie Thomas) is also establishing his name in the French paper art scene. In an interview for Fricote magazine (n°14), they affirmed that the desire of quitting computers and digital media has been their very first principle. Indeed, paper offers a lot of possibilities of colors, texture and resistance. It establishes a physical relationship but always ephemeral one because of the fragility of this material. This ambiguity is a key element in the poetry of a paper artwork. Paper is rich of contradictions: resistant and ephemeral, malleable but solid, flat and multidimensional. Cutting, pasting, transforming it is a true challenge that can bring something totally unexpected in the end. Committed in favor of environmental issues, the two artists only use PEFC recycled paper.

This trend began some years ago. At this time, Zim & Zou collaborated with Icon magazine (n°104) in 2012. Indeed, the magazine played a crucial role by asking the duo to illustrate an article titled « The Future of Food », about the future of nourishment with new technologies, from 3D printer to food ink. They therefore sculpted a 3D printer able to construct fake burgers. In 2014, the duo is on the cover of Fricote n°14 (and its supplement « Japan Eat Food ») on the theme of comfort food. For this special edition, they prepared a paper roast and a pot.

After these projects, the duo received several orders such as the “Paper Rebirth” campaign for the NGO Ecofolio, which asked them to collaborate with June21 to promote paper recycling. They therefore created a superb phoenix sculpted using old papers collected by passers-by into an advertising frame near the Opera Garnier. The symbol is strong : with paper, you can do anything you want if you just recycle it.

Then, they collaborated with Hermès. In 2014, the French manufacturer entrusted them with the decoration of a window in Passeig de Gràcia, in Barcelona. The story was inspired by “The fox’s Den” by Wes Anderson. The collaboration was renewed in 2017, in Dubai.

Paper art is a global trend. In every country, there is an original interpretation of it, inspired by local culture and habits. Our trip starts in Stockholm, where we can find Fideli Sundqvist , who is passionate about still life artworks. London is the hometown of Lobulo, a pop paper artist : his Darth Vader/Jesus, for example, is quite famous.

In Spain, Maria Laura Benavente explores the paper-food, being particularly focused on vegetables. Paper-art editorial projects flourish everywhere. We can quote the 2014 Pirelli Calendar “New Flavours”, by Nearly Normal Craft : an apple in January, an orange in February…The brand Lacoste  also exploits this art for the new perfume « L!VE » campaign. A pop-up book has been created for the occasion: 24 pages of paper reliefs by the Belgian agency Ink Studio. An artwork that reminds us of “Calendar” by the Hungarian Eva Somogyi. For her book, she selected a Miklos Radnoti’s poem each month and she illustrated it with delicate plants shapes all made in paper.

Paper art also influenced fashion brands such as the Bea Szenfeld fall-winter collection 2016 : clothes are entirely paper-made. Another important contribution to the paper-art universe came from Jeremy Scott for the Moschino spring-summer 2017, all based on the idea of 2D.

The Indian designer Sabeena Karnik, uses paper to explore typography and creates amazing sculptures inspired by the alphabet. Extremely detailed, her artworks are meticulous and perfectly balanced. In her series Outbreak, the artist  Rogan Brown pushes perfectionism to its paroxysm by using the laser-cut technique. By using the same technique, Canadian Calvin Nicholls creates incredible bird compositions.

Jule Waibel, an English fashion designer, created some paper chiffon dresses, creating marvelous body movements. Her last collection, Entfaltung, is an artisanal masterpiece giving to paper an incredible elegance. Paper offers a lot of advantages on the aesthetic, financial and practical points of view.

The art of manipulating, cutting and pasting paper is not a novelty. The origins of this art are linked to Japanese origami. From an etymological point of view, origami literally means “to bend paper”. It is a very ancient discipline, which arrived in Europe around the 19th century. Kirigami is very close to origami but it is more about cutting paper than bending it. Origami and kirigami flowers and artworks were gifts offered to symbolize friendship and divinities. These two ideograms could be summed up with the word « chiyogami », the art of handling paper. This art also had an educational role in 1978, with the French movement of bending paper artisans, led by Jean-Claude Correia. The artist Didier Boursin sublimated this art by using paper to explain maths.

The tradition has been passed down to new generations with a new meaning more linked to aesthetic than to friendship and religion. The first exhibitions on paper art took place recently, for exemple Surface to Structure : Folded Forms, at the Cooper Union in Manhattan, that showcased 88 origami artists. Among them, Byriah Loper intertwined triangles to create circular sculptures and Ronald Koh, from Singapour, gave life to adorable little creatures. 

Just like their colleagues Zim & Zou and Maud Vantours, the Italians of Happycentro worked for several luxury brands, such as Louis Vuitton. For the opening of Osaka boutique, the French fashion house asked them to dsign a paper invitation in origami. The result is a pure and precise design to create a subtle harmony of hollow and relief. The brand wished to give a more noble and stronger approach of this art. The idea was to create a physical and durable object to promote an ephemeral event.

Caroline Attan mixes paper art and poetry : like in the book Calligrammes, by Guillaume Apollinaire, in which the texts reproduce the shape of the words. Here, origami is a mix between sculpture and literature. 

Another fundamental step for paper art is of course collage, a discipline existing since the 20th century. If origami is the “father” of contemporary paper art, collage could be considered as the “mother”. Braque and Picasso’s cubism, or Matisse’s fauvism , dadaïsm, surrealism, all these movements were interested in practicing collage. An excellent example is of course Breton, who wrote his poems by pasting letters. In opposition with origami, collage is developed in two dimensions even if the technique is still to cut and paste.

Collage also seems to be a source of inspiration for a new generation of artists who explore this medium in a modern way. These artists choose to work in 2D to maintain the flat nature of paper, in opposition with origami. Stylist Ernest Artillo is inspired by contemporary fashion. He constructs mannequin silhouettes by deconstructing bodies and colors. His work is subtle and refined, influenced by surrealism.

Sammy Slabbinck is another fanatic of “pasting”. He is specialized in vintage collages using old pictures, historical or advertising images, highlighting the “American way of life”. Inspirations are diverse and possibilities are infinite. The artist KARBORN prefers abstraction with as a main theme women, flowers and painting. His collages are scanned, tape is visible to give a more “authentic” touch.

Laura Plageman prints landscape pictures, she then crumples them unveiling marvelous folds and pleats.

Methods are different and they constantly evolve, thanks to artists who are always imagining new shapes. This new paper art trend is probably a way of pushing further a spectacular 3D dimension.

Paper art is not confined to traditional paper : it is more and more opened to other materials like glossy paper or sepia pictures. All supports are a good pretext to go further. Very often, we see photography as a creation in itself. However, some creators consider it simply as a starting point. Embroidered pictures are an example of another category of paper art, slightly different from the traditional one, because of the use of needle and thread.

Maurizio Anzeri calls his art « Photo-sculpture » to define his embroidered photographs. According to him, arts such as sewing, photography, drawing and sculpture are inseparable. Sewing on a picture gives to it a sculpture allure. He even says that he draws with needle and thread. These additions to pictures create a new story, giving to portraits a new significance. Anzeri particularly likes to cover faces with fabric in order to create masks, by reworking the identity of the person. For him, this technique is similar to a modern cartography.

Jessica Wohl and Jose Romussi also manipulate photography film by embroidering it. Jessica Wohl started some years ago. What fascinates her is the touch of these artworks that have a very physical dimension. To do so, she takes her inspiration from Freud and his “Uncanny”, Gregor Schneider and his project « Die Familie Schneider », from a gothic universe but also from daily-life in American suburbia. She is fascinated by the way we interact with the world. A picture is a testimony of the reality but when it is covered by other materials, this reality is metamorphosed, creating a confusion between illusion and reality.

At the beginning, she wanted to “repair” a work she did and she started using white-out on some pictures. The problem with this tool is that it always cracks and it disappears. She therefore had the idea of sewing to replace the white-out and make it durable. Her work starts by the choice of a photograph that she finds in a totally casual way, without knowing who the photographer is. In a way, she tries to give parents back to a lost memory. By using glue, she reinforces the pictures and give them a stronger consistance. Then, she starts her sewing work and gives a new identity to the piece.

From paper sculptures, born from origami and collage, to embroidery on glossy-paper, paper art seems to live a true revival. Paper artists did not invented a new way of expression, but they strongly innovated and broke traditions. If Maud Vantours’ patterns, Maurizio Anzeri’s embroideries and Ernest Artillo ‘scollages are appreciated so much by people, it may be precisely because they are not so perfect as digital art. These imperfections and details, this authentic side, make all the difference. Instead of using PAO, Illustrator or Photoshop, the artist follows an artisanal process with all the imperfections that it includes.

In some years we will probably read books exclusively in an .epub format, we will probably receive news only on our smartphone and tablets will replace paper and pencils. Perhaps painters will only use iPads. However, it seems that some artists are not ready to turn the page.