Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Surrealist graphic design techniques


1- Fumage (smoking) was a technique of automatism invented by Wolfgang Paalen (1907-1959) in the late 1930s. Here the chance imagery was provoked. by moving a candle under a sheet of paper; and random areas of soot would develop from which the mind could form images. All these techniques depend for their application upon the hallucinatory mind of the artist.















2- Frottage (rubbing), developed by Ernst and described by him in Beyond Painting, (1948).


3- Grattage (scraping), also a created by Ernst, which transferred frottage to to oil painting. In decalcomania (transferring) the image was obtained by laying arbitrary patches of color on a piece of paper. A clean piece was then rubbed gently on top. When separated, strange grottos, exotic vegetation and underwater scenes suggested themselves to the imagination. A picture was made by chance. 

Nota bene: See that a lot of these contributions disappear in the digital media. Why? The notoriety of the effect is realized in 2D of the analog texture. Obtaining this digitally would not be a tangible realization, but a casual formal addition.