automatism, Method of painting or drawing in which conscious control over the movement of the hand is suppressed so that the subconscious mind may take over. For some Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock, the automatic process encompassed the entire process of composition. The Surrealists, having once achieved an interesting image or form by automatic or chance means, exploited the technique with fully conscious purpose. See also Abstract Expressionism, action painting, Surrealism.
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Max Ernst Summary
Max Ernst was a German painter and sculptor who was one of the leading advocates of irrationality in art and an originator of the Automatism movement of Surrealism. He became a naturalized citizen of both the United States (1948) and France (1958). Ernst’s early interests were psychiatry and
Surrealism Summary
Surrealism, movement in visual art and literature, flourishing in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; but Surrealism’s emphasis was not on negation but
Willem de Kooning Summary
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-born American painter who was one of the leading exponents of Abstract Expressionism, particularly the form known as Action painting. During the 1930s and ’40s de Kooning worked simultaneously in figurative and abstract modes, but by about 1945 these two tendencies
poetry Summary
Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and