Rosemarie Trockel, ’56 Brushstrokes’ (1990)

The ’56 Brushstrokes’ are the product of a Painting Machine designed by Rosemarie Trockel. Seven rows of eight brushes are attached to shafts oufitted with steel rollers, which are drawn along a track approximately two meters long by a spool driven by an electric motor. The brushes are manufactured by Da Vinci, the painter’s brush factory in Nürnberg, with the hair of real artists. As they are pulled along, the brushes are first dipped in watercolors and then drawn over Japanese paper, so that they leave behind eight different brush strokes running in multiple broken “autograph marks” parallel to one another.