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CAVA1001 AUTOMATIC DRAWING
‘Pure psychic automatism ... the dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by
reason and outside all moral or aesthetic concerns.’
Andre Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism, 1924
The form of Automatic Drawing, known as Automatism was developed by members of the Surrealist
movement as a means of expressing the subconscious. Automatism refers to a variety of experimental
The University of Sydney CAVA – Experimental Drawing Lab, 2023
CAVA1001 AUTOMATIC DRAWING DR MICHAEL DOOLAN, KENNY SON
drawing techniques where the hand moves randomly across the paper to bring about the application
of chance and accident into the mark-making process. This can be seen in the work of Twentieth-
Century artist Max Ernst through his development of an Automatism technique known as “Frottage”
(French for rubbing), a technique of obtaining an impression of the surface texture of a material, such
as wood or stone, by placing a piece of paper over it and rubbing it with a soft pencil, charcoal or
crayon.
For Surrealists’, Automatic Drawing was hoped to free the artist from rational control where the
drawing produced was attributed in part to the subconscious, and may reveal something of the psyche
which otherwise may be supressed. However, many Surrealists found that Automatism was not entirely
automatic, and on the contrary it involved some conscious intervention to make the image visually
acceptable or comprehensible by involving more of a two-part process of unconscious and conscious
activity.
For most Surrealists' their work’s experimenting with Automatism were Illusionistic or more precisely,
they developed into such drawings when representational forms seemed to suggest themselves.
A more complete version of purely non-representational, Automatic Drawing, free from the strictures of
expectation can be seen in the work of mediums and practitioners of the Psychic Arts as it was thought
by Spiritualists that this particular approach to mark making allowed for a spirit to influence what was
being produced while physically taking control of the medium's (artist’s) body. In the 1940s and 1950s
a group called Les Automatistes pursued artistic works based on these principles and abandoned any
trace of representation through their application of Automatic Drawing in a deeper, more
experimental form since it was almost entirely involuntary.
CAVA Experimental Drawing Lab, Automatic Drawing
Independent Study
• For class discussion and presentation in week 4, use the Automatic Drawing / Frottage
technique to create at least 2 x experimental works inspired by the following words
attributed to one of the founders of the Surrealist movement, Andre Breton:
... the dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason and outside all moral or
aesthetic concerns.
• As you can see from the examples in both the video (link below) and in the image of Max
Ernst’s work above, composition plays an important role in creating a successful Frottage
work. This will require you to combine a number of different textures to create one work. I
will explain more in class.