Automatism and the computer

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. Early 20th century Dadaists, such as Hans Arp, made some use of this method through chance operations. 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.The Automatic Message (1933) was one of Breton's significant theoretical works about automatism.

Automatism has taken on many forms: the automatic writing and 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. "Pure psychic automatism" was how André Breton defined Surrealism, and while the definition has proved capable of significant expansion, automatism remains of prime importance in the movement.

Automatic drawing was pioneered by André Masson but artists who also practised automatic drawing around the same time include the English artist Austin Osman Spare and in France Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp and André Breton.

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.

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