If I were to explain automatic printmaking, I think it’s fitting to explain it by way of automatic writing (WARNING! The following is of potential interest only to dedicated surrealists):
-- Start automatic writing--
In a sense the beeping of the clouds (mechanically surrealistic, here) interferes on some level with coffee coffins, latently milky (blatantly absurd, still stiff, still contrived), altogether on the planets of Mars and Venus … even Jupiter perhaps. (Too mystical to understand. Or is it apprehensible? Is apprehensible a word? Who cares? Yes, it is.)
If one where to carve the linoleum without thinking and follow curves of the mind, the psyche, the soul, obscure, occult, sometimes subtly going left, sometimes sharply right, just go, sometimes down, up, never back or maybe always back, without thinking, flowing, this would be automatic cutting, automatic printmaking. It would never end, never start, always happen. But of course it would start … when it was time to start, and then end when it was time to end, or maybe not.
As for quality of the work, would it be good? Possibly, possibly not. It could serve as a starting point, an inspiration, a departure. And the end … the end would be … in a forest, on top of a mountain, on the beach standing ankle high in the rolling waves, eyes closed, listening. Mystical, beautiful, incomprehensible, vague, potent.
Possibly delightful.
--End automatic writing--
Sources:
- Brotchie, Alastair, Mel Gooding, Alexis Lykiard, and Jennifer Batchelor. A book of surrealist games: including the little surrealist dictionary. Boulder: Shambhala, 1995.