Dictionary. Word
Improvisation
noun
Non-conformist
adjective
Normative
adjective
formalAerography
Automatism
noun
Bulletism
is shooting ink at a blank piece of paper. The artist can then develop images based on what is seen.
Calligramme
A calligramme is a text or poem of a type developed by Guillaume Apollinaire in which the words or letters make up a shape, particularly a shape connected to the subject of the text or poem.
Collage
noun
Coulage
is a kind of automatic or involuntary sculpture made by pouring a molten material (such as metal, wax, chocolate or white chocolate) into cold water. As the material cools it takes on what appears to be a random (or aleatoric) form, though the physical properties of the materials involved may lead to a conglomeration of discs or spheres. The artist may utilize a variety of techniques to affect the outcome.
Cubomania
is a method of making collages in which a picture or image is cut into squares and the squares are then reassembled without regard for the image. The technique was first used by the Romanian surrealist Gherasim Luca.
Cut up Technique
is a literary form or method in which a text is cut up at random and rearranged to create a new text.
Decalcomania
rom the French décalcomanie, is a decorative technique by which engravings and prints may be transferred to pottery or other materials. It was invented in England about 1750 and imported into the United States at least as early as 1865. Its invention has been attributed to Simon François Ravenet, an engraver from France who later moved to England and perfected the process he called "decalquer" (which means to copy by tracing). It is pronounced DEE-CALK. The first known use of the French term décalcomanie, in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Eleanor's Victory (1863), was soon followed by the English decalcomania in an 1865 trade show catalog (The Tenth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics' Association); it was popularized during the ceramic transfer craze of the mid-1870s. You can even hear how it was derived - "dee calk 0 mania / decalc o mania". Today the shortened version is "Decal".
Dream resume
A variation of this procedure in which paint is applied to a paper, the paper then being folded, is popularly practiced (though without surrealist intent) by young schoolchildren.
The dream résumé takes the form of an employment résumé but chronicles its subject's achievements, employment, or the like, in dreams, rather than in waking life. Sometimes dream résumés contain the achievements of both, however.
Echo Poem
is a poem written using a technique invented by Aurélien Dauguet in 1972. The poem is composed by one or more persons, working together in a process as follows.
Eclaboussure
a process in Surrealist painting where Oil paint or Watercolour is laid down and water or turpentine is splattered then soaked up to reveal random splatters or dots where the media was removed, this technique gives the appearance of space and atmosphere. Used in paintings by Remedios Varo.
Entoptic graphomania
(sometimes, though inaccurately, called "entopic graphomania") is a surrealist and automatic method of drawing in which dots are made at the sites of impurities in a blank sheet of paper, and lines are then made between the dots. It is apparently to be distinguished from other "entoptic" methods of drawing or art-making.
The method was invented by Dolfi Trost, who as the subtitle of his 1945 book ("Vision dans le cristal. Oniromancie obsessionelle. Et neuf graphomanies entoptiques") suggests, included nine examples therein. This method of "indecipherable writing" (see below) was supposedly an example of "surautomatism," the controversial theory put forward by Trost and Gherashim Luca in which surrealist methods would be practiced that "went beyond" automatism. In Dialectique de Dialectique they had proposed the further radicalization of surrealist automatism by abandoning images produced by artistic techniques in favour of those "resulting from rigorously applied scientific procedures," allegedly cutting the notion of "artist" out of the process of creating images and replacing it with chance and scientific rigour. However, the question has arisen whether an algorithm should be used to determine in what order to connect the dots to maintain the "automatic" nature of the method.
Etrecissements
The method has been compared to the "voronoi mathematical progression."
Collage is perceived as an additive method of visual poetry whereas Étrécissements are a reductive method. This was first employed by Marcel Mariën in the 1950s. The results are achieved by the cutting away of parts of images to encourage a new image, by means of a pair of scissors or any other manipulative sharpened instrument.
Exquisite corpse (also known as "exquisite cadaver" or "rotating corpse") is a method by which a collection of words or images are collectively assembled, the result being known as the exquisite corpse or cadavre exquis in French. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. "The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun") or by being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed.
Exquisite corpse
is a method by which a collection of words or images are collectively assembled. It is based on an old parlour game known by the same name (and also as Consequences )in which players wrote in turn on a sheet of paper, folded it to conceal part of the writing, and then passed it to the next player for a further contribution.
Fronttage
In art, frottage (from French frotter, "to rub") is a surrealist and "automatic" method of creative production developed by Max Ernst.
In frottage the artist takes a pencil or other drawing tool and makes a "rubbing" over a textured surface. The drawing can be left as is or used as the basis for further refinement. While superficially similar to brass rubbing and other forms of rubbing intended to reproduce an existing subject, and in fact sometimes being used as an alternate term for rubbing, frottage differs in being aleatoric or improvisational and random in nature.
Fumage
Fumage is a surrealist technique invented by Wolfgang Paalen in which impressions are made by the smoke of a candle or kerosene lamp on a piece of paper or canvas.
It was later employed by Salvador Dalí, who called it "sfumato."
Both Paalen and Dali used the technique as a basis for their oil paintings. Paalen's elongated surreal landscapes and Dali's elongated, wavy treatment of animals and objects reveal the influence of the technique on their imagery.
Games
is a surrealist technique in painting in which (usually dry) paint is scraped off the canvas. It was employed by Max Ernst and Joan Miro.
Heatage
is an automatic technique developed and used by David Hare in which an exposed but unfixed photographic negative is heated from below, causing the emulsion (and the resulting image, when developed) to distort in a random fashion.
Indecipherable writing
In addition to its obvious meaning of writing that is illegibile or for whatever other reason cannot be made out by the reader, indecipherable writing refers to a set of automatic techniques, most developed by Romanian surrealists and falling under the heading of surautomatism. Examples include entoptic graphomania, fumage and the movement of liquid down a vertical surface.
Involuntary sculpture
Surrealism describes as "involuntary sculpture" those made by absent-mindedly manipulating something, such as rolling and unrolling a movie ticket, bending a paper clip, and so forth.
Latent news is a game in which an article from a newspaper is cut into individual words (or perhaps phrases) and then rapidly reassembled; see also Cut-up technique.
Latent news
is a game in which an article from a newspaper is cut into individual words (or perhaps phrases) and then rapidly reassembled; see also Cut-up technique.
Mimeogram
is a type of automatic art made by peeling off the backing sheets of mimeograph stencils.
The movement of liquid down a vertical surface is, as the name suggests, a technique, invented by surrealists from Romania and said by them to be surautomatic and a form of indecipherable writing, of making pictures by dripping or allowing a flow of some form of liquid down a vertical surface.
Movement of liquid down a vertical surface
Outagraphy
Paranoiac-critical method
is a surrealist technique developed by Salvador Dalí in the early 1930s. He employed it in the production of paintings and other artworks, especially those that involved optical illusions and other multiple images.
The Surrealists related theories of psychology to the idea of creativity and the production of art. In the mid-1930s André Breton wrote about a "fundamental crisis of the object". The object began being thought of not as a fixed external object but also as an extension of our subjective self. One of the types of objects manifested in Surrealism was the phantom object.
According to Dalí, these objects have a minimum of mechanical meaning, but when viewed the mind evokes phantom images which are the result of unconscious acts.
Parsemage
is a surrealist and automatic method in the visual arts invented by Ithell Colquhoun in which dust from charcoal or colored chalk is scattered on the surface of water and then skimmed off by passing a stiff paper or cardboard just under the water's surface.
Photomontage is making of composite picture by cutting and joining a number of photographs.
Photomontage
is the process and result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. A similar method, although one that does not use film, is realized today through image-editing software. This latter technique is referred to by professionals as "compositing", and in casual usage is often called "photoshopping".
Soufflage
is a Surrealist technique originated by Jimmy Ernst in which liquid paint is blown to inspire or reveal an image.
Surautomatism
ncludes cubomania, entopic graphomania and various types of what the Romanian surrealists called "indecipherable writing".
Triptography
is an automatic photographic technique whereby a roll of film is used three times (either by the same photographer or, in the spirit of Exquisite Corpse, three different photographers), causing it to be triple-exposed in such a way that the chances of any single photograph having a clear and definite subject is nearly impossible. Indeed, finding any edges on the negative itself during the developing process is a nearly impossible task. Typically the developing of such a roll of film is an exercise in automatic technique in and of itself, cutting the film by counting sprocket holes alone, with no regard for the images present on the negative. The results have a quality reminiscent of the transitory period in sleep when one dream suddenly becomes another.
