Is a mosaic a collage?

[Peter Hausamann]

I was wondering if a mosaic is a collage.  Some people say no. But I cannot see why.

I am currently creating an image of an eye. It will be mostly made from sea glass (brown and clear/milky glass), and I'll be using blue sea shells for the iris. I am still using acrylic based glues to attach the pieces, but I might use white grout between the clear/milky glass. I cannot see how a mosaic could be different to a collage that is made up of random sized pieces of coloured paper, as opposed to random sized pieces of coloured glass.

My progress so far:

CAM00215A.jpg

If you think a mosaic is not a collage, please explain why.

[Adamandia Kapsalis]

5 people have viewed this discussion and have not made a comment. So I guess mosaic could be considered under the definition of a collage. Especially (to me) if you use other found materials like shells.

[Paola Borghignoli]

Hi,I think mosaic is collage, made by different kinds of materials, not only paper, as mixed media art.Your work is very beautiful! The blue base of the eye is it paper or else?

[Geoffrey Ellis Aronson]

The process is similar but usually we consider collage paper based. As mosaic is generally recognized as a genre in itself, it would be difficult to envision it as a collage. Hmmmm. But a first cousin, definitely.

[Geoffrey Ellis Aronson]

I would say that generally a collage is taking existing images and restructuring them, so it is not necessarily a collage, or at least it doesn't satisfy that requirement. I would say that a collage has to initially begin with at least one image to be restructured, but not all the elements have to be restructured images. Hmmm. Interesting proposition.