Automatism and surrealism
In the First Surrealist Manifesto (1924) surrealism was defined in terms of automatism:
SURREALISM: pure psychic automatism, by which an attempt is made to express, either verbally, in writing or in any other manner, the true functioning of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation. (1)
Initially, it was regarded primarily as a written technique. Many surrealists had initial misgivings about the very possibility of surrealist painting which, because of the nature of the medium, cannot hope to equal the spontaneous, uninterrupted and undirected flow of words that is the hallmark of automatic writing. However, André Masson, with his development of graphic automatism, a gestural equivalent of automatic writing, suggested one way forward whilst Max Ernst, with techniques based on frottage, showed another. Ernst’s methods depended heavily upon seizing chance effects and also allowed him to retard the flow of ideas and images rather than seeking to record them in real time as they came.
Because of these innovations, by the time Colquhoun came to surrealism, the search for a pictorial equivalent of automatic writing had ceased to be a central concern. Indeed, by the time of the Second Manifesto (1930) automatism was hardly mentioned at all: the debate had moved on to focus upon what Breton described as ‘the occultation of surrealism’ in the search for that certain point in the mind at which opposites cease to be perceived as contradictory. (2)
Whilst some artists emphasised automatism’s role in discovering hidden aspects of the artist’s psyche, others, such as Roberto Matta, valued it as a means for uncovering hidden aspects of objects and for the exploration of what lies beyond the confines of the visible world. Its optical image is just one aspect of the existence of an object. Galaxies, crystals and living matter go through processes of creation, existence and destruction. They exist in time, change with the passage of time and can be observed from multiple perspectives. Conventionally, however, they are only depicted at a fixed point in their history, from a single point in space and, inevitably, with a palette limited to colours which reflect light of a visible wavelength. To his attempts to use automatism to give form to those things which cannot be seen except as an inner vision, Matta gave the name ‘psychological morphology’, a phrase Colquhoun used to describe her paintings of the 1940s. For the painters involved in this theorising – primarily Matta, Esteban Frances and Gordon Onslow-Ford – the possibilities were, literally, endless; ‘It is a Hell-Paradise where all is possible’ wrote Onslow-Ford. He continued; ‘The details of the farthest star can be as apparent as those of your hand. Objects can be extended in time so that the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly can be observed at a glance.’ (3)
Breton, too, understood the mystical nature of the theory and the way it could break down all barriers of time and place: ‘It contains fusion and germination, balances and departures, it incorporates an understanding between cloud and star, we can see all the way back and all the way down… the image of the universal sperm circulates through it.’ (4)
Later in life Colquhoun began to think of music in these boundless terms. Delius' Irmelin (1972), L'Ascension - Messiaen (1974) and Stockhausen’s Poles (1976) are works in which she explored what she called the ‘Psycho-morphological implications in music.’ (5) This was not entirely a new departure as she referred to Linked Senses a large gouache of 1946 in terms of ‘hearing-seeing’ a breaking down of sensory boundaries that can be understood as a sort of synaesthesia.
Notes
1. Breton, A. First Manifesto of Surrealism. Published in English translation in Seaver, R. and Lane, H.R. Manifestos of Surrealism, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1967.
2. Breton, A., Second Surrealist Manifesto. Available in English in Seaver and Lane, op cit.
3. Onslow Ford, G. 1940. The Painter looks within himself. The London Bulletin, issues 18-20.
4. Breton, A. Surrealism and Painting. Translated by Simon Watson Taylor, Harper and Row, New York, 1972 pp 183-188.
5. Colquhoun, I. 1976. Exhibition catalogue: Ithell Colquhoun: Surrealism, Paintings, Drawings, Collages 1936-76. Penzance: Newlyn-Orion Galleries. Introductory essay.
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