Surautomatism is any theory or act in practice of
surrealist
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...
creative production taking, or purporting to take,
automatism to its most absurd limits.
In their 1945 statement ''
Dialectique de la Dialectique'',
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, a ...
n surrealists
Gherashim Luca and
Dolfi Trost
Dolfi or Dolphi Trost (1916 in Brăila – 1966 in Chicago, Illinois) was a Romanian surrealist poet, artist, and theorist, and the instigator of entopic graphomania. Together with Gherasim Luca, he was the author of '' Dialectique de la dial ...
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
Cubomania is a Surrealist technique of making collages by cutting an image into squares and reassembling without regard for the original image at random to create something new.
The technique was invented by the Romanian surrealist Gherasim ...
,
entopic graphomania and various types of what the Romanian surrealists called "indecipherable writing".
See also
*
Dialectique de la dialectique
*
Surrealist techniques
Surrealism in art, poetry, and literature uses numerous 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 so ...
*
Writing
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically Epigraphy, inscribed, Printing press, mechanically transferred, or Word processor, digitally represented Symbols (semiot ...
References
{{reflist, refs=
[{{cite book , title=Dialectique de la dialectique - Message to the International Surrealist Movement , title-link=Dialectique de la dialectique , language=fr, author-first1=Gherasim , author-last1=Luca , author-link1=Gherasim Luca , author-first2=Dolfi , author-last2=Trost , author-link2=Dolfi Trost , date=1945 , quote=Poussant l'automatisme jusqu'à ses limites les plus concrètes et absurdes (le surautomatisme, le talisman-simulacre), objectivisant d'une manière ininterrompue le hasard et l'obligeant à renoncer à son caractère de rareté provenant de la découverte de l'objet trouvé (l'objet objectivement offert, la graphomanie entropique), nous écartons l'idée insupportable de ne pouvoir le capter toujours.}]
/ref>
Sources
The Language of Surrealism
The Language of Surrealism
Historical Dictionary of Surrealism
Historical Dictionary of Surrealism pp. 304, 455, 476.
Sacred Surrealism, Dissidence and International Avant-Garde Prose
Sacred Surrealism, Dissidence and International Avant-Garde Prose
Architectural Draughtsmanship: From Analog to Digital Narratives
Architectural Draughtsmanship: From Analog to Digital Narratives
Surrealist techniques