Decalcomania

Decalcomania (pronounced dih-kal-kuh-mey-nee-uh or dih-kal-kuh-meyn-yuh)

(1) The process of transferring designs from specially prepared paper to cardboard, paper, wood, metal, china, glass etc.

(2) A design so transferred (always rare).

1864: From the French décalcomanie, the construct being décalc- (representing décalquer (to trace, transfer (a design)) the construct being dé- (in the sense of “off”) + calquer (to press) + the interfix “-o-” + -manie (–mania).  Decalcomania is a noun; the noun plural is decalcomanias (the plural in French was decalcomania).  Disappointingly, the noun decalcomaniac is non-standard.

The French prefix dé- partly was inherited from the Middle French des-, from the Old French des-, from a conflation of Latin dis- (apart) (ultimately from the primitive Indo-European dwís).  In English, the de- prefix was from the Latin dē-, from the preposition dē (of, from (the Old English æf- was a similar prefix)).  It imparted the sense of (1) reversal, undoing, removing, (2) intensification and (3) derived from; of off.  In French the dé- prefix was used to make antonyms (as un- & dis- function in English) and was partially inherited from the Old and Middle French des-, from the Latin dis- (part), the ultimate source being the primitive Indo-European dwís and partially borrowed from Latin dē-.  In English de- became a most active word-forming element, used with many verbs in some way gained French or Latin.  The frequent use in Latin as “down, down from, from, off; down to the bottom & totally (hence “completely” (intensive or completive)) came to be reflected in many English words.  As a Latin prefix it was used also to “undo” or “reverse” a verb's action; it thus came to be used as a pure privative (ie “not, do the opposite of, undo”) and that remains the predominant function as a living prefix in English such as defrost (1895 and a symbol of the new age of consumer-level refrigeration), defuse (1943 and thus obviously something encouraged by the sudden increase in live bombs in civilian areas which need the fuses to be removed to render them safe) and de-escalate (1964, one of the first linguistic contributions of the political spin related to the war in Vietnam).  In many cases, there is no substantive difference between using de- or dis- as a prefix and the choice can be simply one of stylistic preference.  Calquer (to press) was from the Italian calcare, from the Latin calcāre (to tread on; to press (that sense derived from calx (heel)).

The suffix –mania was from the Latin mania, from the Ancient Greek μανία (mania) (madness).  In modern use in psychiatry it is used to describe a state of abnormally elevated or irritable mood, arousal, and/or energy levels and as a suffix appended as required.  In general use, under the influence of the historic meaning (violent derangement of mind; madness; insanity), it’s applied to describe any “excessive or unreasonable desire; a passion or fanaticism” which can us used even of unthreatening behaviors such as “a mania for flower arranging, crochet etc”.  As a suffix, it’s often appended with the interfix -o- make pronunciation more natural.  The use of the suffix “-mania” in “decalcomania” may appear a curious use of an element in a word describing a process in graphical or decorative art given usually it’s appended to reference a kind of obsession or madness (kleptomania, bibliomania, megalomania et al) but here it’s used in a more abstract way.  The “-manie” in the French décalcomanie was used to suggest a fad or craze (the latter in the sense of something suddenly widely popular) and was not related to the way “mania” is used by mental health clinicians.  So, it was metaphorical rather than medical rather as “Tulipmania” came to be used of the seventeenth century economic bubble in the Netherlands which was centred on the supply of and demand for tulip bulbs.

TeePublic’s Lindsay Lohan decals (page one).

The noun decal (pronounced dee-kal or dih-kal) was in use by at least 1910 as a clipping of decalcomania, a process which came into vogue in France as early as the 1840s before crossing the channel, England taking up the trend in the early 1860s.  As a noun it referred to (1) the prepared paper (or other medium) bearing a image, text, design etc for transfer to another surface (wood, metal, glass, etc) or (2) the picture or design itself.  The verb (“to decal” and also as decaled or decaling) described the process of applying or transferring the image (or whatever) from the medium by decalcomania.  The noun plural is decals.  In the US, the word came to be used of adhesive stickers which could be promotional or decorative and this use is now common throughout the English speaking world.  The special use (by analogy) in computer graphics describes a texture overlaid atop another to provide additional detailing.

Variants of the transfer technique which came to be called decalcomania would for centuries have been used by artists before it became popularized in the mid-eighteenth century.  The method was simply to spread ink or paint onto a surface and, before the substances dried, it was covered with material such as such as paper, glass, or metallic foil, which, when removed, transferred the pattern which could be left in that form or embellished.  Originally the designs were deliberate but the innovation of the Surrealists was to create imagery by chance rather than conscious control of the materials.  The artistic merits of that approach can be discussed but young children have long taken to it like ducks to water, splashing colors on one side of a piece of paper and then folding it in half so, once pressed together, the shape is “mirrored”, creating what is called a “butterfly print”, something like the cards used in the Rorschach tests.

Although an ancient practice, it is French engraver Simon François Ravenet (1706–circa 1774) who is crediting with give the technique its name because he called it décalquer (from the French papier de calque (tracing paper) and this coincided with painters in Europe experimenting with ink blots to add “accidental” forms of expression into their work.  Ravenet spent years working in England (where usually he was styled Simon Francis Ravenet) and was influential in the mid century revival of engraving although it was in ceramics decalcomania first became popular although the word didn’t come into wide use until adopted by the Spanish-born French surrealist Óscar Domínguez (1906–1957).  It was perhaps the German Dadaist and Surrealist Max Ernst (1891–1976) who more than most exemplified the possibilities offered decalcomania and it was US philosopher turned artist Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) who said of him: “Like every consequential modern painter, Max Ernst has enforced his own madness on the world.”  Motherwell was of the New York School (which also included the Russian-born Mark Rothko (1903–1970), drip painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) and the Dutch-American Willem de Kooning (1904–1997)) so he was no stranger to the observation of madness.  Condemned by the Nazis variously as an abstractionist, modernist, Dadaist and Surrealist, Ernst fled to Paris and after the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945) he was one of a number of artistic and political figures who enjoyed the distinction of being imprisoned by both the French and the Gestapo; it was with the help of US art patron and collector Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979) he in 1941 escaped Vichy France and fled to the US.

That “help” involved their marriage, hurriedly arranged shortly after the pair landed in New York but although in the technical sense a “marriage of convenience”, she does seem genuinely to have been fond of Ernst and some romantic element wasn’t entirely absent from their relationship although it’s acknowledged it was a “troubled” marriage. A divorce was granted in 1946 but artistically, she remained faithful, his work displayed prominently in her New York gallery (Art of This Century (1942–1947)), then the city’s most significant centre of the avant-garde.  Through this exposure, although he never quite became integrated into the (surprisingly insular) circle of abstract expressionists, Ernst not only became acquainted with the new wave of American artists but contributed also to making European modernism familiar to Americans at a time when the tastes of collectors (and many critics) remained conservative.  He was an important element in her broader mission to preserve and promote avant-garde art despite the disruption of war.  So, the relationship was part patronage and part curatorial judgment and historians haven’t dwelt too much on the extent it was part love; even after their divorce, Guggenheim continued to collect pieces by Ernst and they remain in her famous “Venice Collection” at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni.  As a wife she would have had opinions of her husband but as a critic she also classified and never said of Ernst as she said of Pollock: “...the greatest painter since Picasso.”

Untitled (1935), Decalcomania (ink transfer) on paper by André Breton.

For Ernst, the significance of decalcomania was not its utility as a tool of production (as it would appeal to graphic artists and decal-makers) but as something which would result in a randomness to excite his imagination.  What he did was use the oil paint as it ended up on canvas after being “pressed” as merely the starting point, onto which he built elements of realism, suggesting often mythical creatures in strange, unknown places but that was just one fork of decalcomania, Georges Hugnet (1906–1974) rendering satirical images from what he found while André Breton (1896–1966 and a “multi-media” figure decades before term emerged) used the technique to hone surrealism, truly decalcomania’s native environment.

Decalcomania in psychiatry and art: Three of the ink-blot cards (top row) included by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1885-1922) in his Rorschach Test (1927), a projective psychological tool in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed with psychological interpretation or historical statistical comparison (and now, also AI (artificial intelligence)) and three images from the Pornographic Drawing series by Cornelia Parker (bottom row).

Nor has decalcomania been abandoned by artists, English installation specialist Cornelia Parker (b 1956) producing drawings which overlaid contemporary materials onto surfaces created with the decalcomania process, the best known of which was the series Pornographic Drawing (1996) in which an inky substance extracted from pornographic film material was applied to paper, folded in half and opened again to reveal the sexualised imagery which emerged through the intervention of chance.  Although it’s speculative, had Ms Parker’s work been available and explained to the Nazi defendants at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) when they were considering the Rorschach Test cards, their responses would likely have been different.  Rudolf Hess (1894–1987; Nazi Deputy Führer 1933-1941) would have been disgusted and become taciturn while Julius Streicher (1885–1946; Nazi Gauleiter of Franconia 1929-1940) would have been stimulated to the point of excitement.

Europe after the Rain II, 1940-1942 (Circa 1941), oil on canvas by Max Ernst.

Regarded as his masterpiece, Europe after the Rain II (often sub-titled “An Abstract, Apocalyptic Landscape”) was intended to evoke feelings of despair, exhaustion, desolation and a fear of the implications of the destructive power of modern, mechanized warfare.  It was a companion work to an earlier to the earlier Europe after the Rain I, (1933), sculpted from plaster and oil on plywood in which Ernst built on a decalcomania base to render an imaginary relief map of Europe.  It was in 1933 Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) gained power in Germany.

Europe after the Rain I, (1933), oil & plaster on plywood by Max Ernst.

Even the physical base of Europe After the Rain I was a piece of surrealist symbolism, the plywood taken from the stage sets used for the film L'Âge d'or (1930) (The Age of Gold or the Golden Age depending on the translator's interpretation).  Directed by Spaniard Luis Buñuel (1900-1983), L'Âge d'or was a film focused on the sexual mores of bourgeois society and a critique of the hypocrisies and contradictions of the Roman Catholic Church's clerical establishment.  While one of France's first "sound films", it was, as was typical during what was a transitional era, told mostly with the use of title cards, the full-screen explanatory texts which appeared between scenes.

Snow Flowers (1929) oil on canvas by means of frottage & grattage by Max Ernst.

Technically, Ernst was an innovator in Decalcomania, in 1925 using the technique of frottage (laying a sheet of paper over a textured surface and rubbing it with charcoal or graphite).  The appeal of this was it imparted the quality of three dimensionality and Ernst liked textured surfaces as passages in a larger composition.  He also employed grattage (frottage’s sister technique) in which an object is placed under a piece of paper, which is then covered with a thin layer of pigment and once the pigment is scraped off, what is revealed is a colorful imprint of the object and its texture.

1969 Chrysler (Australia) VF Valiant Pacer 225 (left), 1980 Porsche 924 Turbo (centre) and cloisonné Scuderia Ferrari fender shield on 1996 Ferrari F355 Spider (right).

There was a time when decals or cars were, by some, looked down upon because they were obviously cheaper than badges made of metal.  That attitude changed for a number of reasons including their use on sexy, high-performance cars, the increasing use of decals on race cars after advertising became universally permitted after 1968 and the advent of plastic badges which, being cheaper to produce and install, soon supplanted metal on all but the most expensive vehicles.  By the mid 1970s even companies such as Porsche routinely applied decals and the Scuderia Ferrari fender shield, used originally on the cars run by the factory racing team, became a popular after-market accessory and within the Ferrari community, there was a clear hierarchy of respectability between thin, “stuck on” printed decals and the more substantial cloisonné items.

A video clip explaining why a Scuderia Ferrari fender shield costs US$14,000 if it's painted in the factory.

However, many of the cloisonné shields were non-authentic (ie not a factory part number), even the most expensive selling for less than US$1000 and there was no obvious way to advertise one had a genuine “made in Maranello” item.  Ferrari’s solution was to offer as a factory option a decalcomania, hand-painted by an artisan in a process said to take about eight hours.  To reassure its consumers (keen students of what the evil Montgomery Burns (of The Simpsons TV cartoon series) calls “price taggery”), the option is advertised (depending on the market) at around US$14,000.