Today's AWAD is:

collage (kuh-LAZH, koh-) noun

A form of art where various disparate objects are assembled together.

[From French collage (gluing), from coller (to glue), from colle (glue), from Vulgar Latin colla, from Greek kolla (glue). The words protocol and collagen have the same parentage.]

Collage is something anyone can do, and, in my experience, kids do it best. But parents are always calling it a mess and mopping it up. They should have it framed.

But, I jest, of course, as we can see for ourselves on this webpage recommended by Anu:

http://home.mindspring.com/~toughskins/collages/collages.html

And how does "pastiche" differ from "collage"?*

A-H Dictionary: pastiche - NOUN:
1. A dramatic, literary, or musical piece openly imitating the previous works of other artists, often with satirical intent. 2. A pasticcio of incongruous parts; a hodgepodge: “In . . . a city of splendid Victorian architecture . . . there is a rather pointless pastiche of Dickensian London down on the waterfront” (Economist).
ETYMOLOGY: French, from Italian pasticcio. See pasticcio.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/29/P0102900.html

"Picasso Papers" by Rosalind E. Krauss

* As an analysis of how and why Picasso's Cubist aesthetic of the prewar years gave way to what Krauss takes to be pastiche classicism and pastiche collage, her account is as persuasive as it is brilliant.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_n7_v36/ai_20572942

Picasso, who had dazzled the world by turning newspaper into ''esthetic gold'' in his Cubist collages, was suddenly copying Poussin, Ingres and Renoir. Not only was he abandoning Cubism, modernism's pride and joy, he was flirting with neo-classicism. ''Here,'' Krauss says, ''is Picasso as counterfeiter.''

Critics accused him of pastiche. ''Everything, including Leonardo, Durer, Le Nain, Ingres, van Gogh, Cezanne, yes, everything . . . except Picasso'' was in the show, the critic Roger Allard wrote. Robert Delaunay was so appalled that he later suggested that even Picasso's Cubism was an imitation -- of Georges Braque. The only continuity in Picasso's work, he said, was a ''continuity in pillage.''
-------
It was perfectly modern of Picasso to choose scraps of newspaper for their puns. He let the words ''prets,'' ''prets,'' ''prets'' (loans, loans, loans) bubble up inside a seltzer bottle. He played on Mallarme's poem ''Un Coup de Des'' (''A Roll of the Dice'') by cutting ''un coup de the'' (a drink of tea) from ''un coup de theatre'' (a dramatic event). And just as Mallarme let ''or'' run amok on the page, sometimes meaning ''gold,'' sometimes ''now,'' sometimes leading a closeted life in ''dehors'' (outside) or ''fantasmagorique,'' Picasso took apart ''journal'' to make ''jou,'' suggesting both ''jouer'' (to play) and ''jouir'' (to climax).

BUT just how much verbal content can be allowed? In ''Re-ordering the Universe,'' Patricia Leighten suggested that we should actually read the news in these clips -- the announcement of an armistice, the description of cholera victims piled high. Krauss thinks this is too much. Picasso was not trying to shoehorn political content into his collages. But the idea that he might be playing with language -- representing talk itself and the shifty character of words -- is perfectly fine. ''Each of these fragments is just enough to produce the motion of conversation, the play of relations, the sociability of the group,'' Krauss writes.[/]

http://www.tamu.edu/mocl/picasso/archives/1998/opparch98-87.html

Picasso Pastiche - Graphic
http://www.georgeunderwood.com/graphics/picasso2.html