Par Avion: 🎨 ORIGINAL ART & history 📸 (body art collage)

This artwork is a combination of collage and body art, a form of an assemblage with post stamps & old letters. Some of letters were love letters sent to me, others I bought from a second-hand bookshop. Those were written in the time around 1950 and 1960.

I find a lot of beauty and nostalgic feelings in old postcards, old letters, and stamps. Especially in times, when most people use on daily bases mainly digital typing and not handwriting.

The collage as a visual art technique gives a chance to combine real objects in the art without imitating them through painting on a 2-dimensional surface as a 3-dimensional illusion. In this case, the 3-dimensional real body became 2-dimensional through the post stamps glued to her skin.

The term collage was presented by both Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in the beginning of the 20th century.

“Techniques of collage were first used at the time of the invention of paper in China, around 200 BC. The use of collage, however, wasn't used by many people until the 10th century in Japan, when calligraphers began to apply glued paper, using texts on surfaces, when writing their poems. The technique of collage appeared in medieval Europe during the 13th century.“

A number of people laid claim to the concept of the postage stamp as a new invention. Stamps were first introduced in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 1 May 1840 as a part of postal reforms promoted by Sir Rowland Hill. He was an English teacher, inventor, and social reformer. With its introduction, the postage fee was paid by the sender and not the recipient.

In the first decade of postage stamps existence (depending on the country), stamps were issued without perforations. Scissors or other cutting mechanisms were required to separate a desired number of stamps from a full sheet.
The first stamp issue to be officially perforated was issued by the U.S. Post Office on February 24, 1857.

The Universal Postal Union adopted comprehensive rules for airmail at its 1929 Congress in London. Since the official language of the Universal Postal Union is French, airmail items worldwide are often marked Par avion, literally: "by airplane".

During the first aerial flight in North America by balloon on January 9, 1793, from Philadelphia to Deptford, Jean-Pierre Blanchard carried a personal letter from George Washington to be delivered to the owner of whatever property Blanchard happened to land on, making the flight the first delivery of air mail in the United States.

This artwork was created in 2013. My model is also an artists, who took time to support my project.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.

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With love & light
Bella

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