Fumage

Fumage, from the French fumee meaning smoke, is an artistic technique in which an image or texture is created by the soot and smoke of the flame of a lit candle or oil lamp held beneath a support, paper, canvas, or a still-wet painted surface. As it settles, the soot leaves soft, cloud-like, unpredictable traces that the artist can partly control by directing the flame, and then paint over or fix. The technique was developed by the Surrealist Wolfgang Paalen around 1936, and related experiments were made by Salvador Dalí, who called the technique sfumato. Fumage belongs to the circle of Surrealist automatic methods, alongside frottage, decalcomania, and solarisation, which sought to invite chance, the elemental, and the unconscious while loosening the artist's rational control. The ghostly, atmospheric images born of smoke suited the Surrealist interest in dreams, anxiety, and the irrational. Today fumage is used by experimental artists exploring elemental, process-based ways of making an image.