Surrealist automatism
 | It has been suggested that automatic drawing be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since March 2007. |
Automatism is a surrealist technique involving spontaneous writing, drawing, or the like practiced without conscious aesthetic or moral self-censorship. Automatism has taken on many forms: the automatic writing and drawing initially (and still to this day) practiced by surrealists can be compared to similar, or perhaps parallel phenomena, such as the non-idiomatic improvisation of free jazz[1].
Surrealist automatism is different from mediumistic automatism, from which the term was inspired. Ghosts, spirits or the like are not purported to be the source of surrealist automatic messages.
"Pure psychic automatism" was how André Breton, surrealism's founder, defined surrealism, and while the definition has proved capable of significant expansion, automatism remains of prime importance in the movement.
In 1919 Breton and Philippe Soupault wrote the first automatic book, Les Champs Magnétiques, while The Automatic Message was one of Breton's significant theoretical works about automatism.
In the 1940s and 1950s the Canadian group called Les Automatistes pursued creative work (chiefly painting) based on surrealist principles. These artists, led by Paul-Emile Borduas, sought to proclaim an entity of universal values and ethics proclaimed in their manifesto "Refus Global".
Some surrealists write automatic mathematics or equations.
The computer, just like the typewriter, can be used to produce automatic writing and automatic poetry. The surrealist practice of automatic drawing, originally performed with pencil or pen and paper, has also been adapted to mouse and monitor, and other automatic methods have also been either adapted from non-digital media, or invented specifically for the computer. For instance, filters have been automatically run in some bitmap editor programs such as Photoshop and The GIMP. Computer-controlled brushes have been used to "simulate" automatism.
Surautomatism
Some Romanian surrealists invented a number of surrealist techniques (such as cubomania, entopic graphomania, and the movement of liquid down a vertical surface) that purported to take automatism to an absurd point, and the name given, "surautomatism", implies that the methods "go beyond" automatism, but this position is controversial.
Automatic drawing
Automatic drawing (distinguished from drawn expression of mediums) was developed by the surrealists, as a means of expressing the subconscious. In automatic drawing, the hand is allowed to move 'randomly' across the paper. In applying chance and accident to mark-making, drawing is to a large extent freed of rational control. Hence the drawing produced may be attributed in part to the subconscious and may reveal something of the psyche, which would otherwise be repressed. Examples of automatic drawing were produced by mediums and practitioners of the psychic arts. It was thought by some Spiritualists to be a spirit control that was producing the drawing whilst physically taking control of the medium's body.
Automatic drawing was pioneered by André Masson. Artists who practised automatic drawing include Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp and André Breton. The technique was transferred to painting (as seen in Miró's paintings which often started out as automatic drawings), and has been adapted to other media; there have even been automatic "drawings" in computer graphics. Pablo Picasso was also thought to have expressed a type of automatic drawing in his later work, and particularly in his etchings and lithographic suites of the 1960s.
Most of the surrealists' automatic drawings were illusionistic, or more precisely, they developed into such drawings when representational forms seemed to suggest themselves. A group of French-Canadian artists, les Automatistes, abandoned any trace of representation in their use of automatic drawing. This is perhaps a more pure form of automatic drawing since it can be almost entirely involuntary — to develop a representational form requires the conscious mind to take over the process of drawing, unless it is entirely accidental and thus incidental. (Romanian surrealists claimed to have taken this purity even farther with the development of what they called "surautomatic" methods, one of which is entoptic graphomania, in which the impurities in the paper itself are supposed to define the drawing.)
Automatic drawing is also seen as a form of "channeling" where the hand is guided by a consciousness not of one's own.
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