frottage

frottage (French: ‘rubbing'). A technique of creating an image by placing a piece of paper over some rough surface such as grained wood or sacking and rubbing the paper with a crayon or pencil until it acquires an impression of the surface quality of the substance beneath. The resulting image is usually taken as a stimulus to the imagination, forming the point of departure for a picture expressing subconscious imagery. The technique was invented in 1925 by Max Ernst, who described how he was inspired by some floorboards, ‘the grain of which had been accentuated by a thousand scrubbings … I made from the boards a series of drawings by placing on them, at random, sheets of paper which I began to rub with black-lead. In gazing attentively at the drawings thus obtained … I was surprised by the sudden intensification of my visionary powers and by the hallucinatory succession of contradictory images superimposed, one upon the other, with the persistence and rapidity peculiar to amorous memories. My curiosity awakened and astonished, I began to examine indiscriminately, using the same means, all sorts of materials found in my visual field: leaves and their veins, the frayed edges of a bit of sackcloth, the brush strokes of a “modern” painting, a thread unwound from a spool, etc.’ Many other Surrealists adopted the technique. See also AUTOMATISM.