Automatism (art)

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The automatism (Greek autómatos = moving itself) is an artistic process. Above all, it has become known as a method of writing ( Écriture automatique ) in Surrealism . It essentially describes the attempt to write or paint spontaneously and to the exclusion of reason .

According to the surrealist André Breton and his first manifesto of surrealism (1924), this is how one depicts "the real process of thinking" and in this way a "true photograph of thought" can be achieved. It was mainly about exploring the unconscious. The writer expanded these ideas theoretically in his essay The Automatic Message (1933) in dealing with other (such as psychological and spiritualistic) forms of automatism.

A poetic description of automatism reads: “The hand freed from the brain moves wherever the pen leads it; and with the force of an astonishing bewitchment she leads the pen in such a way that it comes to life, but because the hand has lost all connection with logic, in this way restored, it establishes contact with the unconscious. "

In the field of music, automatism is most likely to be found in free jazz . A good example of “automatic writing” are the works of the Czech author Bohumil Hrabal , although this technique found its way into his writing especially from the 1970s.

As a cultural technique , automatisms are scientifically investigated by the graduate college of the same name of the German Research Foundation at the University of Paderborn .

literature

  • André Breton, The Automatic Message . In: The Message. Art and Occultism , ed. v. Claudia Dichter, Hans Günter Golinski, Michael Krajewski, Susanne Zander. Walther König: Cologne 2007, pp. 33–55 ISBN 978-3-86560-342-5 . (with illustrations)

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