Henri Michaux : Frottages - Comment, Bernard; Stoullig, Claire; Musée d'art et d'histoire, Genève; Les Abattoirs, Toulouse (Genève : Bärtschi-Salomon Editions Sàrl Genève, 2001)
Although the pictorial work of Henri Michaux (1899-1984) has been widely shown over the last three decades, virtually nothing was known about the frottages he made during the Second World War. This is the first book on the subject, and presents the contents of two large sketchbooks which have never been seen before. The child-like technique of frottage can be said to have entered art history in 1925, when Max Ernst began using it in conjunction with other forms of "automatic" writing as part of the Surrealist exploration of the unconscious. It consists of rubbing a pencil against a sheet op paper that has been placed over a rough surface (bark, fabric, leaf, string etc.). The patterns that come through can then be used in a more complex compostion or left as they are. Michaux, who inclined towards frugal techniques, used frottage in order to reveal the "space within". Temperamentally alien to the dogmatism of André Breton, he was driven by a constant thirst for freedom as he created his strange formal universe. His exploration of the "lobe of monsters" (the title of a book of poems published in 1944) is wholly personal, intended simply to exercise his own anxieties. Michaux's works are like "snapshots" of his mind, peopled by familiar guests - plant-like slow worms, frogs and toads, praying mantises and octopuses. This book sheds light on unknown aspects of a medium, but also on some of the monsters that haunted Michaux at a time when everyday life was full of horror.
Henri Michaux : Frottages, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, 12 November 2001 - January 2002 / Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva, January-April 2002
bibliog. p. 106-111
biog. p.98-105
Engels
Frans
boek
Keywords: Michaux, Henri