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Andre´ Masson. Portrait of Robert Desnos. Frontispiece from the illustrated book C'est les bottes de 7 lieues/Cette phrase "Je me vois," by Robert Desnos. 1926. Soft ground etching, 9 1/8 x 5 7/8" (23.2 x 15.0 cm) © 1998 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris |
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Stanley William Hayter. Combat. 1936. Engraving and soft ground etching, 15 3/4 x 19 3/8" (40.0 x 49.3 cm) © 1998 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris |
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(3 of 3 pages) Surrealists employed various methods to tap into the unconscious. One was automatism, the expression of "the actual functioning of thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason" [André Breton]. For visual artists, drawing "automatically" meant allowing line to meander on its own, dictated by inner impulses rather than a preconceived subject, and only later finding within these lines elements of representation. Masson, (top) among the first to attempt automatist drawings, created this print to accompany a book of automatic poems written in a trance-like state. Hayter (bottom) used automatic line to express his horror at the explosive tensions and violence of the Spanish Civil War. |
