Art Encyclopedia - Automatism

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Automatism
Automatism is an activity, faculty and quality that is automatic, involuntary, spontaneous, unthinking and without conscious control. Automatism was a favourite technique of the surrealists because of its relience on the subconscious.

Automatism as a surrealist technique involved spontaneous writing, drawing, or the like practiced without conscious aesthetic or moral self-censorship. Automatism has taken on many forms: the automatic writing and drawing initially (and still to this day) practiced by surrealists can be compared to similar, or perhaps parallel phenomena, such as the non-idiomatic improvisation of free jazz.