L'autophage (Fulgurites)

An itinerant Surrealist active in Paris, New York, and Mexico City, Wolfgang Paalen is perhaps best known for his invention of fumage, the experimental technique used to create the image here. Named for the French word for smoke, fumée, the technique was a way to relinquish authorial control by painting not with brushes, but rather with candle flames placed near a freshly prepared surface. When the smoke collects on the support, the resulting image evokes any number of associations—from passing clouds or air currents to intangible, otherworldly spirits. The title of this piece alludes particularly to the interconnection of creative and destructive natural processes. Autophagy is an ancient Greek word for eating one’s own body, while fulgurites are crystalline tubes created when lightning strikes the Earth and transforms grains of sand into twisting crusts of glass. When Paalen fled Europe a year later, he took this work with him to New York, exhibiting it at the Julien Levy Gallery. Fledgling Abstract Expressionists Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Jackson Pollock saw it there. Although Paalen stayed in the United States for only a short time before immigrating to Mexico, he was instrumental in introducing Surrealist automatism to the New York avant-garde.