Transfer

A general label for the technique of transmitting an image from one surface to another. Artists have long incorporated the transfer technique into a variety of artistic practices. During the late 14th century Renaissance artists transferred preparatory drawings or designs to moist plaster when making fresco paintings—a method that is also often incorporated into the process of developing a painting or print. In the 1750s, transfer printing was invented to decorate enamels and ceramics. Robert Rauschenberg used the technique in the 1960s as an art form in and of itself, creating “transfer drawings” from found imagery culled from newspapers and magazines, which he soaked in solvent and rubbed face down onto paper.