Editing Surrealist automatism (section)

==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>