Matt Mullican: Rubbings

Deploying a unique form of “frottage” technique, Matt Mullican’s (born 1951) Rubbings have served to record the abiding motifs and themes of his art since the early 1980s. From the beginning of his career, Mullican tried to create pictures that would not be paintings, producing banners, posters and, in 1984, his first Rubbing. The technique works thus: the canvas is placed on a cardboard plate, which is rubbed with an oil stick to transfer the image. The cardboard plate can be reused for other works, and so the imagery may reappear in different configurations. Each Rubbing is therefore at once a single work and a reproduction. Comprising around 500 works, documented by images and catalogue entries, this volume documents all of Mullican’s Rubbings on canvas from 1984 to 2016.