Q. Which painter developed the technique of frottage?
A. Max Ernst
Frottage is the French word for a surrealist technique in which the artist takes a pencil or other drawing tool and makes a rubbing over the textured surface of such things as wood grain, fabric, or leaves as a form of spontaneous creation. The drawing can either be left as is or further refined to bring out the shapes the rubbings invoke.
Surrealist painter Max Ernst (1891-1976) practiced Dada, the nihilistic art movement. Dada was conjured up at the time of World War I. The movement was a protest against the horror and barbarism of war and against the colonialist interests that were believed to be the root cause of the war. Not only that, Dada was an expression against cultural, intellectual, and artistic conformity viewed as an integral part of the prevailing more realistic or classical art of the day. Dadaism was anti-art. Dada hoped to destroy traditional values in culture, aesthetics, and art. Ernst formed a group of Dada artists in Cologne that once created a scandal by organizing a Dada exhibit in a public restroom.
To help his flow of imagery from his unconscious mind, Ernst began to use frottage (pencil rubbings). He said he was inspired by grain in planks of wooden flooring; the patterns in the grain suggested strange images to him. He captured these by laying sheets of paper on the floor and then rubbing over them with a soft pencil.
He also experimented with decalcomania (another non-traditional art method in which the artist transfers paint from one surface to another by pressing them together). The results would be unpredictable, and what began as an experiment suddenly seemed to offer Ernst rich possibilities for his paintings. By contemplating the accidental patterns and textures resulting from these techniques, he allowed free association to suggest images he then used in finished work – images like landscapes, profiles, heads, strange animals, and forms of plant life.
For example, "Epiphany" (1940) is an example of decalcomania suggesting strange, twisted, hidden human, animal, and plant forms that Ernst developed into a finished painting. It is said that this painting was created during a troubled and turbulent period of his life when he was arrested at the outbreak of the war because he was a German national resident in Paris.
In the “Forest and Dove” (1927) Ernst depicts imagery symbolic of a forest that he created by scraping paint to reveal the imprint of objects beneath the canvas. Most likely the trees were created by scraping over the backbone of a fish. As he often did, Ernst shows himself in the center of the artwork in the form of a dove. Today this painting can be seen at the Tate Museum.
Source:
Bailey, Colin J. (1995). The Art Quiz Book: 2000+ Questions on Painters and Paintings” Station Press: Scotland.
