
Germinal Landscape,14" x 16.5", 1978

The technique
known as frottage (or rubbing in French) is an elaboration of the game
of placing
paper over a coin and rubbing with
a pencil on it to obtain an impression. The rubbing of temple
friezes is likewise a common
practice.
In the hands of surrealist pioneer, Max Ernst, however frottage
became
the basis of a lifelong
pursuit
of hallucinatory or divinatory images drawn forth from natural
surfaces such as wood, leaves, and
other textures as in his famous 1926 series Histoires Naturelles.