U ARTS: April 2006

Rubbing, Spill, Imprint, Transfer

These categories represent 4 ways to approach making drawings using indexical marks.

By indexical, I mean marks that are the residue of something, marks that are not direct, a result of your purposeful hand, but a result of indirectness - marks that record an action or leave a trace. In other words, you will remove your "hand" somewhat to allow for a new kind of image to develop. The important thing to remember is that you are letting the residue (drip, fingerprint, etc.) become the image. The unconscious mind starts to play, allowing chance to be a factor. Below are examples that will hopefully make it clearer to you.

You will make 4 drawings, explained in your handout, that reflect these different types of approaches. You can use these indexical marks as fields to deposit more literal types of drawing marks, or just leave them as they are.

Max Ernst

Ernst developed a process called "Frottage" or rubbing, where he would place paper over a textured surface and rub with charcoal or graphite. The resulting marks would then help him generate imaginary figures and landscapes.

Henri Michaux

Michaux used Frottage as well, making images out of charcoal rubbings on various surfaces, allowing the rubbed texture to lead him into figuration.

Morris Louis

Louis would pour paint from one end of the canvas and carefully control its passage down, layering colors over each other, never using a brush.

Andy Warhol

These are called the "Oxidation Paintings" and were formed by the artist urinating onto copper plates, and allowing the oxidation process to form the painting.

Pat Steir

After applying thinned out paint to canvas, Steir allows the paint to drip down in transparent veils.

Roland Flexner

Flexner blows bubbles with ink through straws and lets them burst on paper.

Yves Klein

Entitled "Anthropometries," Klein made a series of paintings where he coated bodies and body parts in blue paint and printed them on paper.

Robert Morris

These are entitled "Blind Time Drawings" in which the artist blindfolded himself and made drawings using his fingers smearing charcoal, they are a record of his movements.

David Hammons

This drawing was made by laying a large piece of paper down on a basketball court and bouncing the dirty ball on it over and over.

Gary Kuehn

This image was generated from the residue of a hockey puck smeared in ink, moving across paper.

Janine Antoni

This drawing is called "Butterfly Kisses" and was made by loading her eyelashes with mascara and blinking on the paper.

Robert Rauschenberg

In many works Rauschenberg used Xerox Transfer, scribbling on the back of the xerox with a pencil to get a partial, quasi-gestural residue of the image.