Max Ernst (1891-1976)

'On a rainy evening I found myself in a hotel on the French coast when I was gripped by an obsession that made me stare excitedly at the deeply grooved cracks in the floorboards. I decided to yield to the symbolism of the obsession. To sustain my potential for meditation and hallucination, I made a series of sketches on the floorboards by arbitrarily placing a few sheets of paper on them and then began to rub on them with black pencil. When I closely scrutinzed the sketches thus made - "the dark areas and other, delicately lit half-dark areas" – I was amazed at the sudden intensification of my visionary capabilities and the hallucinatory result of the contrasting pictures.' -Max Ernst.