Pain du Monde Frottages by Dirk Hagner

Dirk Hagner: "A series of 11 exquisite graphite rubbings of breads from around the world. All pieces are one-of-kind images, gathered in a hand-made book binding. This project combines the oldest cultural staple of human kind, bread, with the oldest way of printmaking, rubbings, or as printmakers call it, frottage*."
 
Using printmaking and rubbings, Hagner presents a lovely visual discourse of bread of the world. It is a reminder of how much bread and the partaking of it together is so much apart of the many cultures of our world. This simple act of sharing bread has a sense of friendliness and comfortable interaction whether it is a bagel, a baguette, or a bun.
 
*Frottage, Wikipedia: “In frottage, the artist places a piece of paper over an uneven surface then marks the paper with a drawing tool (such as a pastel or pencil), thus creating a rubbing. The drawing can be left as it is or used as the basis for further refinement. While superficially similar to brass rubbing and other forms of rubbing intended to reproduce an existing subject, and in fact sometimes being used as an alternative term for it, frottage implies using this rubbing technique to create an original image.
 
“It was developed by surrealist artist Max Ernst in 1925. Ernst was inspired by an ancient wooden floor where the grain of the planks had been accentuated by many years of scrubbing. The patterns of the graining suggested strange images to him. He captured these by laying sheets of paper on the floor and then rubbing over them with a soft pencil.”