Editing Surrealist automatism

{{Short description|Art technique}}{{About|the surrealist technique without conscious self-censorship|the paranormal writing technique|Automatic writing|the method of writing and educational technique|Free writing}}{{More references|date=February 2024}}{{Inline citations|date=February 2024}}[[File:Masson automatic drawing.jpg|thumb|[[André Masson]]. ''Automatic Drawing''. (1924). Ink on paper, 9{{frac|1|4}} × 8{{frac|1|8}}" (23.5 × 20.6 cm). [[Museum of Modern Art]], New York]]
'''Surrealist automatism''' is a method of art-making in which the artist suppresses conscious control over the making process, allowing the unconscious mind to have great sway. This drawing technique was popularized in the early 1920s, by [[André Masson|Andre Masson]] and [[Jean Arp|Hans Arp.]]

==Origins==
[[Automatic behavior|Automatism]] has taken on many forms: the automatic writing and [[#Automatic drawing and painting|drawing]] initially (and still to this day) explored by the surrealists can be compared to similar or parallel phenomena, such as the non-idiomatic improvisation.
"Psychic automatism in its pure state" was how André Breton defined Surrealism, and while the definition has proved capable of expansion, automatism remains of prime importance in the movement.<ref>{{Cite web|author=Staff|date=ndg|title=MoMA Learning: Surrealism|url=https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/surrealism/#:~:text=In%20his%201924%20Surrealist%20Manifesto,any%20aesthetic%20or%20moral%20concern.%E2%80%9D|access-date=December 12, 2022|website=[[MoMA]]|archive-date=December 12, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221212230811/https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/surrealism/#:~:text=In%20his%201924%20Surrealist%20Manifesto,any%20aesthetic%20or%20moral%20concern.%E2%80%9D|url-status=live}}</ref>

Early 20th-century [[Dada]]ists, such as [[Hans Arp]], made some use of this method through chance operations. [[Surrealism|Surrealist]] artists, most notably [[André Masson]], adapted to art the [[automatic writing]] method of [[André Breton]] and [[Philippe Soupault]] who composed with it ''[[Les Champs Magnétiques]]'' (The Magnetic Fields) in 1919.<ref name="Dictionary">Chilvers, Ian and Glaves-Smith, John, ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art'', second edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 45-46. {{ISBN|0199239665}}.</ref> ''[[The Automatic Message]]'' (1933) was one of Breton's significant theoretical works about automatism.

==Automatic drawing and painting==
{{anchor|Automatic drawing}} <!--Automatic drawing redirects here -->
'''Automatic drawing''' (distinguished from [[mediumistic automatism|drawn expression of mediums]]) is an artistic technique developed by [[surrealists]] in which the hand is allowed to move randomly across the paper. In applying [[Randomness|chance]] and accident to mark-making, drawing is to a large extent freed of [[rationality|rational control]]. Hence the drawing produced may be attributed in part to the subconscious and may reveal something of the [[Psyche (psychology)|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 [[Spiritualist Church|Spiritualists]] to be a spirit control that was producing the drawing while physically taking control of the medium's body.

Automatic drawing was first written about by the English artist [[Austin Osman Spare]] who wrote a chapter, Automatic Drawing as a Means to Art, in his book, ''[[The Book of Pleasure]]'' (1913). Other artists who also practised automatic drawing were [[Hilma af Klint]], [[André Masson]], [[Joan Miró]], [[Salvador Dalí]], [[Jean Arp]], [[André Breton]] and [[Freddy Flores Knistoff]].{{cn|date=February 2024}}

The technique of automatic drawing 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 [[illusion]]istic, or more precisely, they developed into such drawings when representational forms seemed to suggest themselves. In the 1940s and 1950s the [[French Canadian]] group called [[Les Automatistes]] pursued creative work (chiefly [[painting]]) based on surrealist principles. They abandoned any trace of [[Representation (arts)|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 [[accident]]al and thus incidental. These artists, led by [[Paul-Émile Borduas]], sought to proclaim an entity of [[universal value]]s and ethics proclaimed in their manifesto ''[[Refus Global]]''.

As alluded to above, surrealist artists often found that their use of "automatic drawing" was not entirely automatic; rather, it involved some form of conscious intervention to make the image or painting visually acceptable or comprehensible, "...Masson admitted that his 'automatic' imagery involved a two-fold process of unconscious and conscious activity...."<ref>The Surrealists: Revolutionaries in art & writing 1919–1935, Jemma Montagu, page 15</ref>

==Surautomatism==
{{Unreferenced section|date=February 2024}}
Some Romanian surrealists invented a number of [[surrealist techniques]] (such as [[cubomania]], [[Surrealist techniques|entoptic 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.

==Paul-Émile Borduas==
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The notion of automatism is also rooted in the artistic movement of the same name founded by Montreal artist [[Paul-Émile Borduas]] in 1942; himself influenced by the [[Dadaist]] movement as well as André Breton. He, as well as a dozen other artists from Quebec's artistic scene, very much under restrictive and authoritarian rule in that period, signed the ''Global Refusal'' manifesto, in which the artists called upon North American society (specifically in the culturally unique environment of [[Quebec]]), to take notice and act upon the societal evolution projected by these new cultural [[paradigms]] opened by the Automatist movement as well as other influences in the 1940s.

==Contemporary techniques==
The [[computer]], like the [[typewriter]], can be used to produce [[automatic writing]] and [[Surrealist techniques|automatic poetry]]. The practice of automatic drawing, originally performed with pencil or pen and paper, has also been adapted to [[computer mouse|mouse]] and [[computer display|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 [[GIMP]], and computer-controlled brushes have been used by [[Roman Verostko]] to simulate automatism.<ref>[http://www.verostko.com/gallery.html Pathway Studio Gallery<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
Grandview — a software application created in 2011 for the Mac — displays one word at a time across the entire screen as a user types, facilitating automatic writing.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://smarterbits.org/writing-with-grandview.html |title=Archived copy |access-date=2012-03-29 |archive-date=2014-10-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141010183912/http://smarterbits.org/writing-with-grandview.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Asemic writing]]
* [[Automatic writing]]
* [[Cut-up technique]]
* [[Free improvisation]]
* [[Intuitive music]]
* [[Scribble|Scribbling]]
* [[Pareidolia]]
* [[Surrealist music]]
* [[Pseudohallucination]]

==Footnotes==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20071221083112/http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/322.html An automatic drawing] by [[Jean Arp]]
* [http://www.biroco.com/automatic.htm ''What is an automatic drawing?'']
* [http://www.cjmorgan.com/automatic-drawing Automatic Drawing]

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[[Category:Surrealist techniques]]
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