“TRADITIONAL SURREALIST ART AND TECHNIQUES”

An comprehensive study of the Methods and Techniques employed by the Surrealist Artists.

By:

-2008-


Surrealism in art, poetry, and literature utilizes numerous unique techniques and games to provide inspiration. Many of these are said to free imagination by producing a creative process free of conscious control. The importance of the unconscious as a source of inspiration is central to the nature of surrealism.


The Surrealist movement has been a fractious one since its inception. The value and role of the various techniques has been one of many subjects of disagreement. Some Surrealists consider automatism and games to be sources of inspiration only, while others consider them as starting points for finished works. Others consider the items created through automatism to be finished works themselves, needing no further refinement.


SURREALISTIC TECHNIQUES:

• 1 Aerography
• 2 Automatism
• 3 Bulletism
• 4 Calligramme
• 5 Collage
• 6 Coulage
• 7 Cubomania
• 8 Cut-up technique
• 9 Decalcomania
• 10 Dream résumé
• 11 Echo poem
• 12 Eclaboussure
• 13 Entoptic graphomania
• 14 Étrécissements
• 15 Exquisite corpse
• 16 Frottage
• 17 Fumage
• 18 Games
• 19 Grattage
• 20 Heatage
• 21 Indecipherable writing
• 22 Involuntary sculpture
• 23 Latent news
• 24 Mimeogram
• 25 Movement of liquid down a vertical surface
• 26 Outagraphy
• 27 Paranoiac-critical method
• 28 Parsemage
• 29 Photomontage
• 30 Soufflage
• 31 Surautomatism
• 32 Triptography

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

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.

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. 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 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. These artists, led by Paul-Emile Borduas, sought to proclaim an entity of universal values and ethics proclaimed in their manifesto Refus Global.

As alluded to above, surrealist artits 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 acitvity....”

Bulletism is shooting ink at a blank piece of paper. The artist can then develop images based on what is seen.

A calligramme is a text or poem of a type developed by Guillaume Apollinaire in which the words or letters make up a shape, particularly a shape connected to the subject of the text or poem.

Collage is the assemblage of different forms creating a new whole. For example, an artistic collage work may include newspaper clippings, ribbons, bits of colored or hand-made papers, photographs, etc., glued to a solid support or canvas.

A coulage is a kind of automatic or involuntary sculpture made by pouring a molten material (such as metal, wax, chocolate or white chocolate) into cold water. As the material cools it takes on what appears to be a random (or aleatoric) form, though the physical properties of the materials involved may lead to a conglomeration of discs or spheres. The artist may utilize a variety of techniques to affect the outcome.

This technique is also used in the divination process known as ceromancy.


Cubomania is a method of making collages in which a picture or image is cut into squares and the squares are then reassembled without regard for the image. The technique was first used by the Romanian surrealist Gherasim Luca.

Cut-up technique is a literary form or method in which a text is cut up at random and rearranged to create a new text.


Decalcomania, from the French décalcomanie, is a decorative technique by which engravings and prints may be transferred to pottery or other materials. It was invented in England about 1750 and imported into the United States at least as early as 1865. Its invention has been attributed to Simon François Ravenet, an engraver from France who later moved to England and perfected the process he called "decalquer" (which means to copy by tracing). It is pronounced DEE-CALK. The first known use of the French term décalcomanie, in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Eleanor's Victory (1863), was soon followed by the English decalcomania in an 1865 trade show catalog (The Tenth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics' Association); it was popularized during the ceramic transfer craze of the mid-1870s. You can even hear how it was derived - "dee calk 0 mania / decalc o mania". Today the shortened version is "Decal".

The surrealist Oscar Domínguez (referring to his work as "decalcomania with no preconceived object") took up the technique in 1936, using gouache spread thinly on a sheet of paper or other surface (glass has been used), which is then pressed onto another surface such as a canvas. Black gouache was originally used in Dominguez's practice, though colours later made their appearance.
Max Ernst also practiced decalcomania, as did Hans Bellmer and Remedios Varo.

Richard Genovese originated the practice of photographic decalcomania, in which photographic scans are superimposed on decalcomanias. His images are decalcomanias produced in a rapid succession without forethought, the most 'beautiful' ones, the ones that suggest something more or other than a decalcomania are set aside. Then a series of photographic images are superimposed upon scans of the decalcomanias and bits and pieces suggest themselves into the framework of the 'aint blots'. Anything that seems forced is immediately rejected. The process is similar to gazing at cloud formations and visualizing objects within the wispy fog. The photographic images "magically" induce themselves to the decalcomanias and vice versa. It is all rather by chance encounter and the exercise is a sort of re-suggestion of through more traditional decalcomania.

In the 1950s and early '60s, King Features Syndicate marketed a set of decalcomanias bearing full-color pictures of characters from King Features comic strips, including Flash Gordon, the Katzenjammer Kids and Dagwood Bumstead. Intended for young children who might have difficulty pronouncing or reading the word "decalcomanias", these transfers were marketed as "Cockamamies", a deliberate mispronunciation of that word. The term "cockamamie" has entered the language with various slang meanings, usually denoting something that is wacky, strange or unusual.

The production of decalcomanias has not been confined to art. At Yale University fingerpaint decalcomanias have been analysed for their tendency, when the process is repeated several times on the same paper, to generate fractals.

A variation of this procedure in which paint is applied to a paper, the paper then being folded, is popularly practiced (though without surrealist intent) by young schoolchildren.
The dream résumé takes the form of an employment résumé but chronicles its subject's achievements, employment, or the like, in dreams, rather than in waking life. Sometimes dream résumés contain the achievements of both, however.


An echo poem is a poem written using a technique invented by Aurélien Dauguet in 1972. The poem is composed by one or more persons, working together in a process as follows.

The first "stanza" of the poem is written on the left-hand column of a piece of paper divided into two columns. Then the "opposite" of the first stanza, opposite in whatever sense is appropriate to the poem, is composed in the right-hand column of the page. The writing is done automatically and often the "opposite" stanza is composed of a sound correspondence to the first stanza.
For a longer work, the third stanza can then begin in the left-hand column as an "opposite" or a sound correspondence to what preceded it in the right-hand column. Then the fourth stanza might be an "opposite" or sound correspondence to what preceded it in the left-hand column, and so forth. When the poem is completed, the opposite of the last phrase, line, or sentence, generally serves as the title.
This is unrelated to the non-Surrealist echo verse form which appears as a dialogue between the questions of a character and the answers of the nymph Echo.

Eclaboussure a process in Surrealist painting where Oil paint or Watercolour is laid down and water or turpentine is splattered then soaked up to reveal random splatters or dots where the media was removed, this technique gives the appearance of space and atmosphere. Used in paintings by Remedios Varo.


Entoptic graphomania (sometimes, though inaccurately, called "entopic graphomania") is a surrealist and automatic method of drawing in which dots are made at the sites of impurities in a blank sheet of paper, and lines are then made between the dots. It is apparently to be distinguished from other "entoptic" methods of drawing or art-making.
The method was invented by Dolfi Trost, who as the subtitle of his 1945 book ("Vision dans le cristal. Oniromancie obsessionelle. Et neuf graphomanies entoptiques") suggests, included nine examples therein. This method of "indecipherable writing" (see below) was supposedly an example of "surautomatism," the controversial theory put forward by Trost and Gherashim Luca in which surrealist methods would be practiced that "went beyond" automatism. In Dialectique de Dialectique they had proposed the further radicalization of surrealist automatism by abandoning images produced by artistic techniques in favour of those "resulting from rigorously applied scientific procedures," allegedly cutting the notion of "artist" out of the process of creating images and replacing it with chance and scientific rigour. However, the question has arisen whether an algorithm should be used to determine in what order to connect the dots to maintain the "automatic" nature of the method.

The method has been compared to the "voronoi mathematical progression."
Collage is perceived as an additive method of visual poetry whereas Étrécissements are a reductive method. This was first employed by Marcel Mariën in the 1950s. The results are achieved by the cutting away of parts of images to encourage a new image, by means of a pair of scissors or any other manipulative sharpened instrument.
Exquisite corpse (also known as "exquisite cadaver" or "rotating corpse") is a method by which a collection of words or images are collectively assembled, the result being known as the exquisite corpse or cadavre exquis in French. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. "The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun") or by being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed.


In art, frottage (from French frotter, "to rub") is a surrealist and "automatic" method of creative production developed by Max Ernst.
In frottage the artist takes a pencil or other drawing tool and makes a "rubbing" over a textured surface. The drawing can be left as is or used as the basis for further refinement. While superficially similar to brass rubbing and other forms of rubbing intended to reproduce an existing subject, and in fact sometimes being used as an alternate term for rubbing, frottage differs in being aleatoric or improvisational and random in nature.

It was developed by Ernst in drawings made from 1925. Ernst was inspired by an ancient wooden floor where the grain of the planks had been accentuated by many years of scrubbing. The patterns of the graining suggested strange images to him. He captured these by laying sheets of paper on the floor and then rubbing over them with a soft pencil.

The use of frottage in Surrealism and Surealist art is quite adequate seeing as the rubbing also assumed the role of "rubbing" in its sexual context. This is especially relevant to surrealism seeing as much of the content behind the art works were based on that of sexuality though of course other themes include politics, war, non-conformism and one which made up much of the surrealist art works, dreams and automatic thought though in many cases, especially in works or artists such as De Chirico and Dali, some or all of these themes was used in any work of art. Frottage has also been used in mail art.


Fumage is a surrealist technique invented by Wolfgang Paalen in which impressions are made by the smoke of a candle or kerosene lamp on a piece of paper or canvas.
It was later employed by Salvador Dalí, who called it "sfumato."
Both Paalen and Dali used the technique as a basis for their oil paintings. Paalen's elongated surreal landscapes and Dali's elongated, wavy treatment of animals and objects reveal the influence of the technique on their imagery.

Grattage is a surrealist technique in painting in which (usually dry) paint is scraped off the canvas. It was employed by Max Ernst and Joan Miró.

Heatage is an automatic technique developed and used by David Hare in which an exposed but unfixed photographic negative is heated from below, causing the emulsion (and the resulting image, when developed) to distort in a random fashion.


Indecipherable Writting
In addition to its obvious meaning of writing that is illegibile or for whatever other reason cannot be made out by the reader, indecipherable writing refers to a set of automatic techniques, most developed by Romanian surrealists and falling under the heading of surautomatism. Examples include entoptic graphomania, fumage and the movement of liquid down a vertical surface.

Surrealism describes as "involuntary sculpture" those made by absent-mindedly manipulating something, such as rolling and unrolling a movie ticket, bending a paper clip, and so forth.
Latent news is a game in which an article from a newspaper is cut into individual words (or perhaps phrases) and then rapidly reassembled; see also Cut-up technique.

A mimeogram is a type of automatic art made by peeling off the backing sheets of mimeograph stencils.
The movement of liquid down a vertical surface is, as the name suggests, a technique, invented by surrealists from Romania and said by them to be surautomatic and a form of indecipherable writing, of making pictures by dripping or allowing a flow of some form of liquid down a vertical surface.


The Paranoiac-critical method is a surrealist technique developed by Salvador Dalí in the early 1930s. He employed it in the production of paintings and other artworks, especially those that involved optical illusions and other multiple images.
The Surrealists related theories of psychology to the idea of creativity and the production of art. In the mid-1930s André Breton wrote about a "fundamental crisis of the object". The object began being thought of not as a fixed external object but also as an extension of our subjective self. One of the types of objects manifested in Surrealism was the phantom object.
According to Dalí, these objects have a minimum of mechanical meaning, but when viewed the mind evokes phantom images which are the result of unconscious acts.

The paranoiac-critical arose from similar Surrealistic experiments with psychology and the creation of images such as Max Ernst’s frottage technique, which involved rubbing pencil or chalk over on paper over a textured surface and interpreting the phantom images visible in the texture on the paper.

The aspect of paranoia that Dalí was interested in and which helped inspire the method was the ability of the brain to perceive links between things which rationally are not linked. Dalí described the paranoiac-critical method as a "spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena."
Employing the method when creating a work of art uses an active process of the mind to visualise images in the work and incorporate these into the final product. An example of the resulting work is a double image or multiple image in which an ambiguous image can be interpreted in different ways.

André Breton hailed the method, saying that Dalí's paranoiac-critical method was an "instrument of primary importance" and that it "has immediately shown itself capable of being applied equally to painting, poetry, the cinema, the construction of typical Surrealist objects, fashion, sculpture, the history of art, and even, if necessary, all manner of exegesis."

Parsemage is a surrealist and automatic method in the visual arts invented by Ithell Colquhoun in which dust from charcoal or colored chalk is scattered on the surface of water and then skimmed off by passing a stiff paper or cardboard just under the water's surface.
Photomontage is making of composite picture by cutting and joining a number of photographs.


Soufflage is a Surrealist technique originated by Jimmy Ernst in which liquid paint is blown to inspire or reveal an image.


Surautomatism is any theory or act in practice of surrealist creative production taking, or purporting to take, automatism to its most absurd limits.

In their 1945 statement Dialectique de la Dialectique, Romanian surrealists Gherashim Luca and Dolfi Trost wrote,
We have returned to the problem of knowledge through images... by establishing a clear distinction between images produced by artistic means and images resulting from rigorously applied scientific procedures, such as the operation of chance or of automatism. We stand opposed to the tendency to reproduce, through symbols, certain valid theoretical contents by the use of pictorial techniques, and believe that the unknown that surrounds us can find a staggering materialization of the highest order in indecipherable images. In generally accepting until now pictorial reproductive means, surrealist painting will find that the way to its blossoming lies in the absurd use of aplastic, objective and entirely non-artistic procedures.
The name surautomatism suggests "going beyond" automatism, but whether surautomatism is anything but a group of methods by which surrealist automatism is practiced is controversial.

Surautomatism includes cubomania, entopic graphomania and various types of what the Romanian surrealists called "indecipherable writing".


Triptography is an automatic photographic technique whereby a roll of film is used three times (either by the same photographer or, in the spirit of Exquisite Corpse, three different photographers), causing it to be triple-exposed in such a way that the chances of any single photograph having a clear and definite subject is nearly impossible. Indeed, finding any edges on the negative itself during the developing process is a nearly impossible task. Typically the developing of such a roll of film is an exercise in automatic technique in and of itself, cutting the film by counting sprocket holes alone, with no regard for the images present on the negative. The results have a quality reminiscent of the transitory period in sleep when one dream suddenly becomes another.

Creativist Christopher Thurlow claims to have discovered this technique when his urge to continue taking photographs was suddenly challenged by the fact that he had run out of un-exposed film.