CategoriesMedium and Techniques
Automatism
Making drawings, paintings or writing without conscious control, a Surrealist method for releasing unplanned images that later painters adopted.
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About
Automatism is the attempt to make art without deliberate control, letting the hand move faster than judgement so that unplanned images can surface. The Surrealists put it at the heart of their programme: André Breton's first manifesto of 1924 defined Surrealism itself in these terms. André Masson let his pen race across paper in automatic drawings and, in 1926–27, threw glue and sand onto canvas to find images in what settled. Max Ernst developed frottage, rubbing pencil over textured surfaces, and Joan Miró began from stains and doodles.
Surrealists who fled to New York during the Second World War passed the method to Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell and their circle. In Montreal, Paul-Émile Borduas led Les Automatistes, whose members included Jean-Paul Riopelle and Marcelle Ferron. On the wall, look for tangled, rapid line, forms that seem to grow out of chance marks, and titles added after the work was done.
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