The artist holds the crayon, places it on the paper, and waits for it to move automatically, to be guided by some higher-spirit. Hence, the name automatic painting. I call it the Ouija board philosophy to art.

As with the spooky late-night-Ouija-university-student manoeuvres, lower, might be a more appropriate adjective, but the philosophy is the same.

The desire of an artist to relinquish his conscious initiative, and hand it over to some unknown, is something I think we can all understand at times... haven't we all doodled on a telephone book?

I have to admit to trying it, just to see whether it really would happen. It did, but then, I have no trouble making my mind a blank... it's thinking that hurts.



"Creative work tends to be looked upon as something done through the artist rather than by the artist, and what used to be a spiritual activity turns into a spiritualistic one-man séance." (66)
Rudolf Arnheim


 

Vladimir Kemenov talks of formalistic art as being... "the most rampant subjectivism, proclaiming the cult of mysticism and of the subconscious," where "abnormal states are held up as examples of the complete freedom of the individual." (67)



"The unconscious functions satisfactorily only when the consciousness fulfills its task to the limit of its capacity." (68)
Carl Gustav Jung



66. Rudolf Arnheim, Toward A Psychology of Art, (Berkeley and L.A., Cal., University of California Press, 1966),p.p. 286, 287
67. Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art, (Berkeley and L.A., Cal., University of California Press, 1968),p.492
68. Rudolf Arnheim, Toward A Psychology of Art, (Berkeley and L.A., Cal., University of California Press, 1966), p. 288