Mixed Media - Tate

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Mixed media

Mixed media is a term used to describe artworks composed from a combination of different media or materials

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Pablo PicassoBottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper (1913)Tate
© Succession Picasso/DACS 2026

The use of mixed media began around 1912 with the cubist collages and constructions of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and has become widespread as artists developed increasingly open attitudes to the media of art. Essentially art can be made of anything or any combination of things.

Mixed media vs. multi-media

What is the difference between mixed media and multi-media artworks? While both terms describe artworks that are made using a range of materials, multi-media is generally used to define an artwork that uses or includes a combination of electronic media, such as video, film, audio and computers.

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Medium

Medium can refer to both to the type of art (e.g. painting, sculpture, printmaking), as well as the materials an artwork is made from

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Multi-media

The term multi-media describes artworks made from a range of materials and include an electronic element such as audio or video

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Collage

Collage describes both the technique and the resulting work of art in which pieces of paper, photographs, fabric and other ephemera are arranged and stuck down onto a supporting surface

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Bricolage

Bricolage refers to the construction or creation of an artwork from any materials that come to hand

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Assemblage

Assemblage is art that is made by assembling disparate elements – often everyday objects – scavenged by the artist or bought specially

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Installation art

The term installation art is used to describe large-scale, mixed-media constructions, often designed for a specific place or for a temporary period of time

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Surrealism

A twentieth-century literary, philosophical and artistic movement that explored the workings of the mind, championing the irrational, the poetic and the revolutionary

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Cubism

Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality invented in around 1907–08 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. They brought different views of subjects (usually objects or figures) together in the same picture, resulting in paintings that appear fragmented and abstracted